Over the past week, I’ve looked hard at Godot as a potential alternative to Unity in the wake of the disastrous Unity pricing model change. I have quite a bit of experience in 3D games engines, particularly in rendering, quite a bit of experience with consoles, and a deep comfort with C++, which are things that many people in the indie space do not have. I also have access to my partner Iain, who has all of that experience and much more in games, and has been a sounding board and second opinion throughout the process. I’ve seen a lot of people over the past few days desperate for an overview of Godot and professional opinions of it.
As a professional engineer (or a former one), I cannot give my professional opinion of this engine after such little time with it, even with source code access. I admit I have not run a single profiler, I have not exported a single build. I have skimmed less than 10% of the source code. I have played around in GDExtensions, but not in anger. I have not tried C# at all.
So this is what I’d like to call a “professional gut feel”. Keep in mind this is only that - a gut feel - and you shouldn’t base critical business decisions off of my gut feel divorced from the context of your project and your team.
This is also not meant to be an endorsement or an attack on Godot or their leadership, although I will include things that are either personal praise or not flattering in the form of direct quotations or paraphrases of other people. I myself will endeavour to keep things to facts and technical/logistical impressions, because my goal in this post is not to start a fight with anyone, it is to give people context they don’t have free access to for decision making.
With that said, let’s get started.
The Godot Engine was first released in 2014, so there are multiple versions of it in use by people at the moment, but is experiencing a spike in interest right now due to people looking to leave Unity. The current version of Godot that is prominent for download on the site is 4.1. My impressions are based on Godot 4.2’s source code (which is latest), although I have some small knowledge of the state of 3.x as part of my investigations, so I’ll occasionally reference it. I am not an expert in the Godot engine, so it’s possible I’ve misinterpreted or made assumptions about it that are not accurate. If they’re brought to my attention or I realise them later, I will come back and edit this post.