honestly, in my opinion the reason acknex is easier to understand than unreal/unity is not the programming language but the basic structure of the engine (including it's very limited capabilities compared to larger engines!).

lite-c itself is pretty much identical to C, it also supports a few C++ features like function overloading and there are some things that work in C/C++ but don't work in lite-c. Other than that the syntax and everything is the same as C. I'd actually prefer if acknex was using C++ because it has many features that I like.

That being said, I agree that unreal and unity are fairly complex to pick up but they also have a TON more features and tools that can be helpful. Once you got comfortable with either of those engines I'm sure you can work pretty efficiently unless you're just making very small test applications.