Defold vs Godot - game engine comparison

Hi!

The time has come to compare Defold with quickly growing engine - Godot! Godot recently released a 4.0 version, so there is a lot to talk about. If you think I missed something or just want to add your input - let me know in the comments!

Best Regards,
Pawel

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Music: Head Candy - William Rosati
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[sdsdfdu]

Godot has more features out of the box but Defold seems more stable and has better support and performance on mobile, and I'm currently interested in making a mobile game so

[Fate-of-the-Galaxy]

Terrific comparison video, and excellent points all around! As someone who makes 2D browser games that also need to be able to be ported to other platforms, Defold has been great and has the edge to Godot with it's smaller file size and better workability for HTML 5. For 3D with more generalized options, I've also used Godot, where as you mentioned 3D support has more out of the box options ATM. Overall IMO Defold is a precision engine that is the best at 2D web and mobile and cross platform, while Godot is more a jack-of-all-trades master-of-none. :)

EDIT: just adding my own experience to help boost the YT discussion so more people ideally see this excellent video and channel!

[guidoopossum]

I like both too. Also I switched from Godot to Unity for getting job, without any problem.

[AlexeyGulev]

I really enjoy watching your videos, and this one in particular is of very high quality. You seem very well-prepared on the topic, and I always look forward to seeing new content from you.
I appreciate the effort and attention to detail you put into your work, and I'm excited to see what you have in store for the future.

[virusfun]

HOORAY! I've been waiting for this comparison! THANK YOU!

[NikitaBorisov-sd]

Amazing! You are very good at making videos. As always, great content, and I also like the movie/meme moments.

[Kirei_Hana]

Godot used to be the go to option for 2D over 3D, its crazy how you talk about Godot 3D as it was Unity. Technology moves so fast it really amazes me!

[internationalticket]

Great video. I've been using Godot for nearly 3 years now, it's what got me into game development and I owe a lot to the project. With the numerous breaking changes and bugs introduced since the 4.0 update, however, I find that I am often more frustrated with things that I can no longer do with the engine than I am pleased to have the other enhancements.

Your point about 2D vs. 3D is the big take away here and what I would bring up to anyone comparing the two engines. The core Godot team has made great strides in building out the engine's 3D capabilities and they should be commended. I, however exclusively make 2D "pixel perfect" games visually inspired by things like Celeste or Shovel Knight. In Godot 3.x, achieving that kind of look with smooth gameplay was difficult. In Godot 4.x, it is arguably impossible due to renderer changes introduced in the rewrite.

If that's not a style you care about, then I can easily recommend Godot for just about anything else. I have decided though to start shopping around to see what other options are out there to meet my specific needs and I am eager to give Defold a try!

[avikarefin]

In 4.0 release, GDNative got replaced by it's successor, GDExtension.

[Goodator]

thank you for this wonderful review and comparison of engines. The engines are actually very different and tailored to specific tasks.

[owdoogames]

This is a very good and fairly objective overall comparison video. I love Godot and have been sporadically messing around with it for a few years as a hobbyist. I've only completed one little game but have four other projects on the go, including my first foray into 3D, and ideas for four others! (I've also been checking out Unity, Unreal and Flax for 3D stuff.)

However, I've recently been drawn to Defold because of what I've heard about its stability, focus and performance. Godot projects sometimes feel like a house-of-cards, and the sweeping changes between 3.5 and 4.0 have put me off it. Being able to build Defold games for Nintendo Switch at no extra cost is also a major attraction for me (though you do have to be registered as a Switch dev with Nintendo). I've also taken a bit of a shine to Lua, after using it for the first time during a Love2D game jam. 

I'm currently trying to decide whether to switch to Defold for one of my newer smaller projects, just to see how I get on.

[erayzesen]

Defold had three disadvantages that couldn't convince me.
1- it cannot allow you to create plugins and tools to customize the entire editor. (Unity, Godot have an advantage here.)
2-Contrary to what was described in the video, Defold felt more foreign to me in terms of user experience compared to all the other game engines I've tried; it had more niche concepts.
3- Defold lacks a built-in GUI tool. You need to rely on the community-made ImGui plugin. You know, Godot has very advanced and useful GUI system.

While I agree with the shortcomings you mentioned about Godot, you didn't talk about these significant deficiencies or radical design decisions of Defold in your video. If you had done so, it would have been a very objective comparison video. Nevertheless, thank you."

[sanketsbrush]

all engines have their own specialities. for example, ue5 have realistic graphics but if you want real time procedurally generated mesh or real time Deforming - reforming meshes in your game then it is much easier to do it with blender based upbge engine.

[nnnumb]

Great comparison, thanks for making it!

[clustersnake]

I tried learning godot for a while but something about it felt weird. I am learning defold now and I feel it is somehow better and easier for me to learn

[MrRootBeerSauce]

Biggest issue for me w/ Godot is GDScript. If you're constructing something with very deep & complex scripting, then having to do it in a completely engine-dependent system really sucks.

I can take Lua scripting elsewhere. It's very flexible and plays nice with C.

But if you're just building basic scripts, then this isn't an issue.

[Lycam]

Godot is also lagging behind with webgl and opengl support. Its 4.2.2 and still no compatibility mode working with all features from version 3.x.

[DoomCatcher]

This video has made me strongly consider defold I've found it very useful

[devatsdb]

defold is more polished, godot 4 hmm lately the devs seems rushing all those shiny things and the funny thing rather solidify 4.0 they choose to span it through many version which is odd and if you want to use 4.0 you will surprised and forced to wait for 4.x

[noiJadisCailleach]

That was surprising. I thought Godot had a very simple and easy to understand UI already. I found relatively low friction to making games with it. Though, tbf, i am comparing it to Unity and UE.

I tried Defold for a very short time before.

My impression was that the UI elems must've been so simple, i thought making a game in Defold was very spartan in it's approach. Hence, more complicated to making games than with Godot. Not to mention, an extreme lack of tutorials.

I may try out Defold again sometime soon because of this vid.