The Defold Game Engine
In this article I will give you an overview of the Defold game engine.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Lately I have been exploring some engines searching for a good HTML5 game engine that is not JavaScript-based. I even tested out creating my own using WebGPU (which turned out to be an exciting tech). Then I stumbled upon Defold. I have seen the engine before of course but the first time I tried it I thought it was very barebones and not developed at all. I was wrong!
Why choose Defold?
In this section I will give you more information on what is great about this small underdog engine.
It’s free
The first thing to point out is that the engine is free. It is a little bit less free than Godot but you wouldn’t need to pay anything to the Defold Foundation for using it or even for porting to any of the consoles (which are currently all supported). This is a great point to consider over Unity and Unreal engine.
Zero Setup Needed
Defold is an engine that has both batteries included and batteries not included. It is a zero-setup project—meaning that you don’t need anything but the executable to start developing games with it. You can even go into native development with C++, and the foundation behind the engine has provided servers which will build your code for you.
Lightweight
The engine does not include too much ready-to-use code, though. Which can be a bad thing if you’re just starting out, but if you’re already experienced enough, this means that the engine is more efficient and lightweight. This is great for games that are targeting HTML5, mobile or weaker consoles like the Nintendo Switch.
This does mean, though, that you have to write a little bit more logic here and there (like AI navigation). The engine does have an asset library which can be used for downloading additional plugins like ads or networking. So some assets have the opt-in approach.
Cross-Platform
The engine is truly cross-platform and supports all major operating systems and consoles for free. Other engines might have you jump through some hoops to build the engine on some platforms or will not be optimized at all for that given platform. Godot, for example, would have you go into a porting house or to get support through W4 games.
Lua & C++ Scripting
The main supported scripting language is Lua, which is very popular and approachable to beginners. It is also very performant. This is way better than the custom language GDScript of Godot, which will not allow you to transfer much of your knowledge from it onto other engines.
You can also build your own native extensions in C++ by using the Foundation’s build servers or creating your own build server using their straightforward Docker setup.
Stable
I cannot remember the last time I installed any version of Godot, and it didn’t have any issue with the scripts or assets. It is just very unstable. The Defold engine has a small and very well-designed process for development. It is still open-source, but development is regular and slow. Breaking changes are not introduced almost at all. Releases are regular at every two weeks.
And a lot more
Sadly the Defold engine doesn’t have too much popularity over social media, but it is a very reliable and efficient engine. Watch this video to see the Foundation explain it themselves:
Conclusion
I am not often impressed by a game engine and almost never that much that I would write an article about it. The Defold game engine did honestly surprise me. I have seen it before but I didn’t appreciate it until now.
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