We are the ordinary three man Indie. One client dev, one game/art designer, one server dev.
I choose Defold as a client dev because it is a (almost)bare-bones 2D game engine with simple but great components. You can simply focus on your game and your code. You have the control over the performance, libraries, shaders, render pipeline, UI… Native Extensions are big bonus. It is a huge advantage that your questions are answered(fast) by core Defold developer team and other talented developers. You can’t buy or easily find that!
But before I decided to use Defold for production I spent almost a year with it. Yes I’m hitting walls and get mad with Defold sometimes. But this is the part of the game dev progress and not just special to Defold.
I must say that %90 of Unity community is sucks. Newcomers, kids, hobbyists… Most of the answered questions and assets are junk too. And who wants to develop a game with premade assets anyway… If you want control, you should do it by yourself.
Defold or Unity or whatever! is not important. Choosing correct tools for the right kind of game is the most important thing in game development. It is related to experience. If you know what you are doing and the engine’s limitations well none of these are the real issue… Also solving problems by myself is a gift for me, It teachs a lot.
Advanced particle editor and shader tutorial please