Community Challenge: Tiny Worlds 🏡

[Pawel]

Hi!

It’s high time to have another Defold Community Challenge! This time we encourage you to build ‘Tiny Worlds’ in Defold!

---

Goal

Create a small, decorated scene, a complete miniature world that can fit entirely on one screen.
Be it a stylized diorama, a small world, a tiny planet, a section of an area, a small ecosystem, a dark dungeon, a green garden, a leafy forest, a single room or a house, a floating island or any other scene, so it feels like a living bit of a world!

It can be in 2D, side-view, top-down, isometric or 3D in perspective or orthographic.
It doesn’t necessarily need to have any logic, controller, character, camera movement etc.
We encourage you to add some music, sounds, particles (maybe leaves, snow, dust, etc.), animations, custom lighting and shadows or other types of “fluff” to make it look better and vivid. It can tell a story through world-building.

Learning Goals:

• Practice worldbuilding and composition on a limited scale.
• Experiment with animation, lighting, particles, and sound.
• Learn how Defold can help you create beautiful scenes.
• Create and share open source projects with community.

---

Time

20 days
Start: 2025-11-11T14:00:00Z
Finish: 2025-12-01T14:00:00Z (with a grace period if needed for late entries)

---

Rules

1. Meet Goal description.
2. Built and running in Defold.
3. You can use any code or art assets you have a legal right to use.
4. Submit a public GitHub/GitLab repo with a short description and a picture/GIF/video/build.
5. Work solo or in a team.

---

Awards

Want to play some new game? Let us bring gifts earlier!
Defold sponsors 4 awards for the Challenge - €25 Steam Gift Cards!
In order to reward both experienced developers for their stunning work and newcomers or beginners who try their best, the Defold Team will select 4 winners, one in each category:

Category	Description
Best Tiny World	Most advanced, charming, immersive, beautiful and original scene
Visual Storytelling	Strong atmosphere, vivid world-building, a story behind the scene
Rookie Award	Best first-time entry for ones who didn’t participate in the previous challenges
Lottery Winner	One participant will be selected randomly from all valid entries

We will announce and contact the winners in December!

---

Get Inspired!

Defold Projects:

Defold Examples:
https://defold.com/examples/

Defold Charming Kitchen by @selimanac:
https://selimanac.github.io/defold-daabbcc3d-example-charming-kitchen/

SuperWEIRD Game Kit by Luden io:
https://ludenio.itch.io/superweird-game-kit

Lights and Shadows and Fog of War examples by @dragosha:
https://forum.defold.com/t/light-and-shadows-example/71713

Defold Scene 3D by @aglitchman:
https://forum.defold.com/t/scene3d-collection-of-assets-for-3d-gamedev/70352

Defold Illumination by @astrochili:
https://forum.defold.com/t/illumination-ready-to-use-forward-shading-lighting-for-3d-games/71465

Defold Curved World by @ross.grams:
https://github.com/rgrams/defold-curved-world/
https://github.com/rgrams/defold-light-and-shadows-curved/

Assets:

Kay Lousberg 3D assets: https://kaylousberg.itch.io/
Isa Lousberg 3D assets: https://www.isalousberg.com/game-assets/
Kenney 2D & 3D assets and sounds: https://kenney.nl/
Dioramas on Sketchfab, e.g. Littlest Tokyo: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/littlest-tokyo-94b24a60dc1b48248de50bf087c0f042
2D & 3D assets by Devil’s Workshop: https://devilsworkshop.itch.io/
3D Modular assets and props by Fertile Soil Productions: https://fertile-soil-productions.itch.io/
Low Poly 3D assets by Broken Vector: https://brokenvector.itch.io/
Pixel Art, Isometric and 3D art by RGS_Dev: https://rgsdev.itch.io/
2D Side and Top-down Pixel art by Szadi: https://szadiart.itch.io/
Free 2D and 3D assets by Craftpix: https://craftpix.net/freebies/

Previous Community Challenges:

https://forum.defold.com/t/community-challenge-recreate-balatro-card-effects-in-defold/76854
https://forum.defold.com/t/community-challenge-explosions/77315
https://forum.defold.com/t/community-challenge-post-processing-effects/79178

[selimanac]

If anyone wants to collaborate, I have a suggestion:

I was planning to make a small example project for Graph Pathfinder using Kenny’s City Kit and Road Kit. However, it’s very time-consuming(and I’m really not motivated for this right now) for me to make it look good (placing all the models, roads, etc.).

If anyone is willing to design this scene in Defold, creating a closed road loop (so cars can loop around and it looks like a small complete miniature village) without bumps/heights/ramps, just flat plain roads (we can adjust later and combine with built-in physics if we have time) using these models, I hope I can handle the traffic system for cars. Maybe I can implement a small minions walking around.

OR I’m open to other design suggestions, where I can use graph pathfinder as a tool.
Collaborator(s) may get rewards if we win.

Just please let me know if you are interested in designing, so I can start developing the solution.

[Piro]

@selimanac I’m up to take a look at something together, wanted to dive a little bit in 3D with Defold anyway to see how it works This sounds like a perfect small exercise.

[selimanac]

Go ahead then. I’ll start working on the traffic tomorrow.

A few notes that come to mind:

• Don’t forget to use instanced materials for the models.
• Models must be properly sized and imported so we don’t have to resize (scale) them in the editor. Ideally, City Kit, Road Kit, Cars, and Minions should all be correctly proportioned relative to each other.
• You may test your scene using Lights and Shadows.
• It would be nice to keep the models as component (model and game object) files. Maybe you can write a simple Python script to generate model and game object files from a directory. Something like this, perhaps: generate_defold_files.py

Feel free to DM me on the forum if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to help if it’s within my knowledge. I’ll create a github repo for this project so we can also discuss there.

[britzl]

@selimanac

It would be nice to keep the models as component (model and game object) files. Maybe you can write a simple Python script to generate model and game object files from a directory. Something like this, perhaps: generate_defold_files.py

Or make it using editor scripts! Editor scripting improvements in the upcoming 1.10.4 version

[Piro]

Awesome! Going to play around with this. Thank you!

[Pawel]

I just remembered a project @ross.grams made a while back for curved worlds shader + lights and shadows by @dragosha, that might perfectly suit the challenge!

But, when I opened it in the latest Defold, a few errors came up regarding changes in Defold itself, so I submitted a PR to update it - until it’s merged into the main repo, please use the fork:

GitHub - paweljarosz/defold-light-and-shadows-curved: Pack of shaders to make light and shadows in...

[NaakkaDev]

@Pawel

Create a small, decorated scene, a complete miniature world that fits entirely on one screen.
Be it a stylized diorama, a small world, a tiny planet, a section of an area, a small ecosystem, a dark dungeon, a green garden, a leafy forest, a single room or a house, a floating island or any other scene, so it feels like a living bit of a world!

I would like a clarification; Is it okay if something comes from “off-screen” (off-world) into the scene and does something and then leaves the scene? I kind of feel like this would be okay, but also that it could be against the “a complete world miniature world that fits entirely on one screen.” part.

[Pawel]

@NaakkaDev

I would like a clarification; Is it okay if something comes from “off-screen” (off-world) into the scene and does something and then leaves the scene? I kind of feel like this would be okay, but also that it could be against the “a complete world miniature world that fits entirely on one screen.” part.

Yes, I would say it’s totally ok!

By “fitting inside one screen” I mean, we don’t need to make a whole world around, just a fraction of it is enough Like for example the Lights and Shadows is perfect example - it is a small scene with boundaries, but it might fit inside a single screen, you can here zoom in.

Maybe you mean something like for example clouds , birds, cars, characters or anything going in and out of the view, yeah? Stuff like this is totally ok

---

Update: I changed it to “can fit” in the description

[Pawel]

I’m working on an Editor Script UI that might be helpful with creating many models out of many gltf files (with same material and textures):

[benjames171]

I’m making a small and simple isometric diorama. Next to add is some lighting and animation.

[Pawel]

@benjames171 nice!

And I’m making (just for funsies, I’m out of competition btw xD) a tiny medieval town using Kay Lousberg assets, Light and Shadows and Curved World:

[selimanac]

Wow, you guys already started designing stuff!
I spent my day converting inputs from orthographic camera to a perspective one (since the road is 3D and editor is 2d) and vice versa.
But I think I got it working. I still need to find and fix a bug in the save/load system on this editor.
At least the first test looks promising, I can sleep peacefully tonight.

[iskream23]

All great projects, I wish to have the same level one day

[Pawel]

Hello @iskream23 and welcome to the forum!

It’s a great time to make something in Defold, even if it’s your first time - you can make a 2D scene too! Don’t hesitate to try - it’s great fun imho and it’s not like a game jam, where you have to make a complete game, challenges are meant to be something smaller

And this time we have a Rookie Award and Lottery Winner categories to encourage everyone to join!

[Pawel]

If someone’s willing to make a 3D scene, today @martianov released also updated version of the BRDF horror scene example for Defold!

GitHub - martianovdev/Defold-BRDF-Deferred-Rendering-V2

You can play around with the scene, add more assets and make a new area!

[selimanac]

@Pawel

If someone’s willing to make a 3D scene, today @martianov released also updated version of the BRDF horror scene example for Defold!

So no need for competition, he’s already the winner! Give him the rewards so we can rest

[Pawel]

You never know And it is not yet submitted technically xD

[Pawel]

@Pawel

I’m working on an Editor Script UI that might be helpful with creating many models out of many gltf files (with same material and textures):

As promised:

Pawel's Editor Scripts and UI collection

I updated the library to 1.2: Added Model components creation UI from GLTF files. This allows to create Model component files in batch from a selection of GLTF file - all will be having the same material (pretty common use case, where you want to add e.g. multiple buildings assets, or characters, etc) You can also access it from Project → Create Models from GLTF and define list of GLTF files on your own adding one by one or using Add Many that opens another popup to select multiple files at on…