I've been working on similar productive things (i.e. reading, jogging, projects), to keep out the 'what-ifs'. One of those projects I intend to start soon is building a small game. I've come across a lot of discussion about engines, frameworks, and hand-built options. A large majority push for larger engines like Unity or Godot that 'do it all' to focus more on the game and less on what's needed to build it. That seems alright, but being a backend dev, I generally enjoy understanding the full operation and building it out as close to my needs as possible.

What have you used for your smaller games? And what would you recommend for someone with programming experience, but lacking experience in pretty much every other facet of game development?