Is Defold suitable for solo developers without strong coding background?

[stoikstone]

Hello, I’m not a professional developer, but I’ve recently been drawn to Defold and started learning Lua. What attracted me most is the calm, focused nature of the engine and how its overall structure has remained stable over time. However, after hearing a few concerns from others, I wanted to ask a few questions to better understand potential challenges.

I’ve heard that mobile development with Defold can become increasingly difficult as projects grow. Could anyone share specific difficulties you’ve faced in areas like monetization (ads, IAP) and live operations (analytics, retention optimization, etc.) after release? For example, issues such as ad mediation setup, regional payment integration, or analytics event tracking. I’ve read that sometimes native platform code or complex integrations are required—how advanced do these tasks get? Would they be too hard for someone without strong development experience?

My goal is to choose one engine and stick with it long-term. Although I have a full-time job, I want to create small, minimal puzzle games—either solo or with a small team. When I read about Defold’s philosophy, it felt like the perfect fit. But after researching more, I started worrying that while it looks simple and lightweight, it might still demand high-level development skills in practice. I’m wondering if it might be more practical to use Unity instead, even though its complexity, frequent updates, and bloated feature set are what originally pushed me away.

I mainly want to know two things: whether someone like me—without a professional programming background—can realistically adapt to Defold over time, and whether the challenges in mobile monetization (ads, IAP, analytics, etc.) are manageable without being a high-level developer. If I can clear up those two concerns, I’d love to fully commit and learn Defold properly. I know I could just “try and see,” but I’ve already spent time experimenting with other engines, so I’d really appreciate hearing from those who’ve gone down this road before.

Thank you very much in advance for your insights.

[britzl]

@stoikstone

I’ve heard that mobile development with Defold can become increasingly difficult as projects grow.

Isn’t this true for any project? And isn’t it more related to “as the project gets closer to release” rather than the fact that it “grows”?

@stoikstone

I’ve read that sometimes native platform code or complex integrations are required—how advanced do these tasks get? Would they be too hard for someone without strong development experience?

The native extensions you find on Defold Asset Portal all provide a Lua interface to script against so you do not really have to touch any native code at all.

@stoikstone

I want to create small, minimal puzzle games

@stoikstone

But after researching more, I started worrying that while it looks simple and lightweight, it might still demand high-level development skills in practice. I’m wondering if it might be more practical to use Unity instead, even though its complexity, frequent updates, and bloated feature set are what originally pushed me away.

You should try both. You won’t know which fits you the best until you’ve tried. Create the same basic puzzle game in both Defold and Unity and compare the process.

@stoikstone

I mainly want to know two things: whether someone like me—without a professional programming background—can realistically adapt to Defold over time, and whether the challenges in mobile monetization (ads, IAP, analytics, etc.) are manageable without being a high-level developer.

You’ve mentioned mobile and montisation several times. This suggests to me that your plan is to build mobile games and make money from them. This is not easy. I would strongly advise against this if this is your first venture into the world of game development. Start making games without thinking about money for some time. Join game jams and make web games and share them on itch.io for experience. Then move on to Poki.com, CrazyGames and others and start making games that can earn you a bit of money. And then, once you know how to make games and perhaps also have a game which has that little something extra then consider which additional platforms you can release it on.

[stoikstone]

Thank you so much for your detailed and thoughtful reply. More than anything, your last comment really changed my perspective. I think this will be a turning point in my journey. I’ll probably look back on this day later on. I truly appreciate it.