Hey, first off, I think a lot of people can relate to what you're feeling, especially those who have worked in the industry. It sounds like you've been through a lot of uncertainty, and leaving a big studio doesn't erase the skills and experience you built while you were there.

Keep a mindset that you've done what many others are still stuck on. You already know what you're passionate about. You have a worldbuilding project that excites you, you're creating art, you're writing lore, and you're sharing your work publicly. That's more than many people ever get around to doing.

Building an audience is painfully slow for most creators. It's easy to look at established projects and assume they grew quickly, but a lot of them spent years posting into the void before people started paying attention. The fact that you're consistently creating and sharing is already a win.

Also, don't underestimate your background in 3D art. Even if you're focusing more on 2D now because of software costs, all of that artistic experience still carries over. Composition, design, storytelling, and visual communication are valuable skills regardless of the medium.

One thing I'd recommend is to focus less on "gaining a following" and more on documenting your process. Share sketches, lore snippets, weapon designs, worldbuilding notes, and your thoughts behind the project. Sometimes people become interested not just in the final product, but in watching it grow.

As for Unreal and game development, not everyone needs to be a programmer. Some of the most compelling projects exist because an artist or writer had a strong vision and found ways to express it through art, comics, writing, worldbuilding, or collaboration.

Most importantly, be kind to yourself. It sounds like you're carrying both disappointment and burnout from how things turned out. That's a heavy weight to carry. The fact that you're still creating despite all that tells me there's a part of you that hasn't given up on this dream.

Keep feeding that part. Your project sounds like something you genuinely care about, and passion like that is worth nurturing, even if progress feels slow right now.

Wishing you the best, and I'd love to see more of the world you're building.

I like to advice that if you are facing some stress (even if it's small), burnout or for whatever reason yo need to, take a rest, breathe. You won't be making a game if you break yourself. This may sound basic, but is pretty easy to forget to prioritize oneself. Specially in the indie side, where many of the stuff to be done now will rely on your shoulders or in the people that you can hire.

Being said that, i'd like to respond about the development topic and the worldbuilding one. First Unreal and Unity can become attractive at first because those are popular/famous tools, but they not the best tools out there. (I am not saying they are bad, but they are build with a specific mindset and use cases that may go or not with you.)  If I can, I'd like to recommend you take a time to look around and see what other tools and engines are available. There are tools that may have some limitations but you may find way more easy to use that Unreal, specially if you are not a programmer or want to ease that weight a bit.

And second, talking about the world-building you are making and the followers. The entertainment market is over-saturated, doesn't matter if with music, stories, or games. As a creator you have to compete against million of stuff, even some that may have decades. I'm not saying 'give up'. What I'm saying is that the followers situation is not related with your artistic skills or worth as a creator. But more related to a 'self-marketing' strategy.  

It's normal to not have followers, specially at first, don't despair if after months your barely have views and 0 followers. That is normal. I started to have my first followers once I started to publish assets. And they don't even came in dozens per day, barely a little few per year (like 10 in one year in the best case). Perhaps, something that can help you if you need to raise morale is searching for communities/forums about what you like, specially if that's a niche, and share there. Make yourself visible between the groups that like stuff related to your world-building. Maybe small/new forums, subbreddits if you can, etc. 

Even so... maybe you don't need to create a game to begin with? keep developing your worldbuilding and then decide what you wanna or can do with it? perhaps it can help you start by creating  draft of short-novela, a comic or short film's/animations.  IDK, those are just ideas i came with. Hope may help.

But again, first take it easy on you.

Good luck.

Aww. I'm sorry to hear you're feeling down. I hope you'll feel better soon, and that things will start looking up.

featuring anthro animals

If it helps, there's are large furry community on this site! They absolutely eat up story-rich furry content here - your anthro stuff will likely do well.

If you prefer simply writing and drawing, perhaps consider just testing the waters out first by using easier engines such as Twine (https://twinery.org/)? Twine requires little to no programming, and you can insert your images by simply using the img src tag.

Alternatively, you can consider browsing the Tools section of Itch Io, tagged Game Engines (/tools/tag-game-engine). Some users here develop their own easy-to-use engines where you only need to drag and drop art and type text into boxes to create a game. I haven't used any of these though, so I can't vouch for them personally.

Whatever it is, good luck! Just take it slow, and maybe play other furry games first to get a gist of what works around this site. I also recommend joining game jams. 

I agree, we live in a world where the top want more and leave less and less for the little guys... aka us. 

Just so you know, you can learn Unreal Engine, just like I did.. I have actually been working on my very first game and I released a demo not long ago and I can tell you I have never made a game before and never touched UE5 before this project. 

I recommend is to write down the type of game you want to make, start small and simple, this includes the name of your game, genre, style and some basic features. 

Then hop on YouTube and just sift through the endless amounts of Tutorials that guide you through the basic common set ups and go from there. 

I'm a creative person myself by nature, love making stuff, drawing, 3d printing etc so this is just another medium I can build on, and also as a visual learner, you have 2 options to use when starting in unreal engine, C++ or Blueprints, most people use Blueprints becauses it's far easier for newbies to manage the engine. So don't give up.. 

Hey! I’m pretty young so I’m no expert, but I just wanted to say that your project sounds incredibly cool! Don't let the big studios or complicated software like Unreal get you down focusing on your own story, characters, and fictional weapons sounds like way more fun anyway. Since 3D software is too expensive, you should definitely check out Blender, it's 100% free and you can use your 3D skills to help you sketch your 2D drawings. For growing your audience, Substack can be really slow, so maybe try sharing your art and lore on Tumblr or Bluesky, because the worldbuilding and animal art communities there are super active and nice. Take your time, don't rush, and keep drawing what you love!