Interesting, I was thinking of playing around with game engines at some point (I did a bit of Java 3D and DirectX years ago at college).

I am sort of torn between looking at Unity , XNA Framework (not technically an engine I suppose) or seeing what can be done with WebGL/Canvas etc.

Unity looks like it has a huge following and plenty of games and the cross platform stuff is a big plus. The only thing I worry about with that it is possibly the flexibility. It reminds me a bit of the "game creator" programs that were popular in the 90s in that perhaps it is aimed at building "me too" type games?

If I wanted to build something with some entirely new gameplay mechanic would I find that it got in the way?