- January 28, 2021
- Defold Foundation
- 5h median play time
Defold
Platforms
About
# The game engine for high-performance cross-platform games Defold is a completely free to use game engine for development of desktop, mobile and web games. There are no up-front costs, no licensing fees and no royalties. The source code is made available on GitHub with a developer-friendly license. The Defold editor runs on Windows, Linux and macOS and includes a code editor, debugger, profiler …
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- Defold is lightweight, easy to use, and has a supportive community, making it a great choice for 2D game development.
- The engine offers good performance and flexibility, allowing developers to create games for multiple platforms with minimal setup.
- The documentation is well-structured and the active development team frequently updates the engine, ensuring it remains relevant and functional.
- Defold lacks several essential features found in other engines, such as a built-in physics engine and advanced GUI management, which can hinder productivity.
- The learning curve can be steep for beginners, as the engine's unique approach to Lua scripting and project organization may be confusing.
- There are reports of stability issues, particularly on Linux, with frequent crashes and bugs that can disrupt the development process.
- optimization20 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
Defold is highly praised for its optimization, offering a lightweight and efficient engine that excels in creating simple 2D games with minimal memory footprint and great performance across multiple platforms, including HTML5 and mobile devices. Users appreciate its ease of use and quick learning curve, making it a strong choice for both professionals and hobbyists, especially when compared to other engines like Godot, which is noted for less optimization but better 3D capabilities. Overall, Defold stands out for its flexibility and performance in the 2D game development space.
“The engine runtime has minimal memory footprint, being lightweight and efficient, providing great performance.”
“Back when I started my contract work, I had to choose an engine that was very optimized for 2D web and mobile but could still build for other platforms, and Defold is perfect (and had great learning documentation to get up and running quickly).”
“Defold to me is indeed a stronger choice for optimized, small engine size, and easy cross-platform 2D for professionals and hobbyists, whereas Godot has less optimization but provides an easier time getting started with 3D for hobbyists.”
“Over time, I have used a variety of game engines, mainly the big titles that everyone knows or has heard of, but never has there been any engine that matches Defold in both flexibility and performance.”
“Simple, cross-platform solution with a focus on performance and memory footprint.”
