Is Defold still a good choice compared with Godot 4?

Questions
#1

Greetings,

I’ve heard a lot of good things about Defold for making 2D games. My top favorite pros are:

  • The performance and export sizes on mobile are excellent!
  • Built-in SDKs and monetization solutions (Huge win for me, since I want to make a mobile game)
  • Lua
  • The simple editor

I really would love to try and use this for a big project, such as a mobile pixel art RPG. But with Godot 4’s first alpha build not far off, I’ve been wondering if Defold is still a top option. Obviously, Godot’s game builds are a lot bulkier and there’s no ad solution, but it’s full of editor features, such as the new, very powerful tileset editor. It also has one of the best GUI solutions in the business, period. And the animation systems are also very good.

It’s not that Defold seems unviable, but rather that a lot of stuff has to be rolled by the developer or third-party software. Coming from engines like Godot and Unity, I’m curious about the opinions of those who have used this engine before about if I should invest time into this engine.

Specifically, can it produce complex systems, such as a dialogue system, quest system, and other RPG mechanics? Is it good at pixel art graphics? Is support from third party tile set makers like TileSetter and Tiled good enough to not make someone miss Godot? What about general quirks or things you like/dislike about the workflow? Anyone here who has Godot experience that could share an opinion?

Thank you for your answers!

5 Likes
#2

I think Fates of Ort is the answer you’re looking for.

Devstreams are on their youtube channel if you want to get an idea.

Yes Godot has a lot of nice built-in features and the editor is much more mature, but in my opinion, especially if you’re targeting mobile, is still pretty rough. Don’t forget that Godot 4 will not ship with a render that is light enough for mobile. That is planned for 4.1.

8 Likes
#3

Thank you for this. Yeah, it’s kind of upsetting they’re stripping OpenGL for a while. I’d happily wait another 3 more months for it to be implemented in 4.0.

I’ll take a look at the game. Again, thanks!

1 Like
#4

I’m using Unity on a daily basis as a non-developer (game designer - so I can’t really tell the differences as a developer), but I’ve always found it “heavy and slow”. In my opinion, Godot is an “amateur” version of Unity, while Defold has a different approach. “Smaller”, lightweighted, clean, pure.

All engines have their strengthes and weaknesses, but Defold is definitely better than Godot for mobile games (I’ve been in the game situation months ago and picked Defold because it was really optimized for mobile games)

Many useful extensions that will make you save time. Great community too (including the devs who helped me many times).

This tilemap editor is pretty cool and directly export to Defold format.

This game was made with Defold, I think you’ll find in it all the mobile game features you can imagine

I don’t see any reason why you could not create the game of your dream with Defold. But regardless of the engine you choose, a “big project” will always require a ton of work :slight_smile: Have fun!

PS : Lua is a blessing

7 Likes
#5

Thank you very much for your detailed reply! It sounds like, then, that Defold might be the best choice for me. If support for Tiled is as good as you say, then that would be my biggest concern taken care of.

:sweat_smile: Yeah, I’ve only been using it for a couple of days, and I already like it a lot. Maybe even more than GDScript.

Absolutely, it’s a lot of work, but that’s why we enjoy it so much. Thank you very much for your information and kind words!

2 Likes
#6

I’ve been following Godot’s development for a long time, but I didn’t make a game in it.

Years ago, before I started making my own game, I reviewed a lot of game engines (Unreal, Unity, Cocos Creator, GDevelop, Construct, Game Maker Studio). I came up with something simple that I was trying to make in each engine. Needless to say, months (maybe even 1 year) have gone by with this. There was something in each engine that caused me difficulty. In the end, I ended up with Cocos Creator which was the most likable. In it, I made a prototype of a fictional game for learning purposes. It was nice and good until I wanted to build on android and integrate a mobile ad sdk. The app compiled for android crashed while it ran well on my desktop, I was completely clueless. It was a disappointment for me to put in months of learning and eventually failed.

After getting desperate and recovering, I started searching again. That’s when I found Defold and Godot. I thoroughly assessed their ability to export to android and the integrability of ad sdks. At this point, it became clear to me that Defold would be the winner. The Godot documentation was still confusing to me at the time, as opposed to the Defold documentation which was clear and understandable. So I started developing the same game in Defold that I made in Cocos Creator. It was very nice that if I had any problems and I couldn’t find a suitable answer on the forum, I got an answer to it almost immediately provided the question. Many times from the developers themselves. That’s when I was reassured that I was in the right place. What was uncomfortable at first was that there was no debugging option in the editor. Fortunately, not long after, the developers announced the arrival of the debugger. This made it an almost perfect tool in my hand. And later, I realized that Defold, in my opinion, is one level of abstraction lower than the other engines. Increasing modularity, you can create your own rendering pipeline, your own native extensions, your own android and ios extensions any way you want. You do not need to install developer sdk-s for all of this because the entire build process takes place on a remote server. As far as I know, maybe you will be able to create your own components soon. These great features offset the immaturity of the editor.

I advise you not to believe anyone, experience Defold, take the time to do so. Try the essential things in small projects. The Godot 4 is going through a big change compared to the 3. I have no doubt it will be a great tool but it will take time. Maybe versions 4.2 or later will be considered stable. I will definitely stay and our next game will be driven by Defold as well. :slight_smile:

(Sorry for the long post)

11 Likes
#7

Thank you for the extensive reply! The more I research it the more Defold seems like an extensively performant sandbox where you program most of your functionality, including stuff that usually is included in an engine like Godot.

But this seems like the appeal, and the reason Defold is so optimized. Thank you for sharing your personal opinions. I fully intend to spend a while using Defold to see if it fully suits me.

6 Likes
#8

As mentioned above Defold is a great choice for mobile. It is definitely possible to make a top notch pixelart rpg with it. For the same level of game quality I would say Godot requires less effort. But performance and engine being lightweight worth the extra effort with Defold.

8 Likes