If you are a game developer, chances are you have heard of Defold, or maybe you’ve even worked on a game using this engine. But did you know that the Defold engine can be the ideal starting point for a GameDistribution game?
Defold is easy to use, versatile and it has a wonderful and active community. The appliance is also free to download, with a license for both personal and commercial use. It is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux, making it ideal for any developer.
Today, we’re excited to speak to Björn Ritzl, Product Owner at Defold. Be sure to read on to discover more about this engine and its compatibility with GameDistribution’s platform.
Hi, Björn! So lovely you could meet us for a chat about our favorite subject: games! First of all, let’s start with the basics. What is Defold? What can developers expect from this game engine?
Defold is a lightweight cross-platform game engine for web, mobile, desktop and console games. Defold has a small runtime compared to other cross platform game engines. A standard version of the engine without any size optimizations compresses to around 950kB with gzip.
We also employ what we call a zero setup policy where there is no need for any external tools to build for any of the target platforms. You can create a build for any platform in a matter of seconds.
And would you say that brand new developers who want to make their debut game are in the right place at Defold? What makes it so easy to use?
The Defold game engine has a comparatively small API surface, which means that it is quite easy to learn the basics of Defold quickly. We get a lot of praise for extensive and up-to-date documentation, tutorials and sample projects.
Defold certainly operates a bit differently from other engines. Yet, overcoming these idiosyncrasies makes you a highly efficient developer. Next, we have to talk about our super-fast builds and “hot reload” capabilities. Specifically, this lets you reload content in a running game, which dramatically reduces iteration time.
Naturally, this encourages rapid experimentation and quick tweaking of game parameters. Finally, you never have to work alone. Our open, friendly community is always ready to help if you get stuck.
Where can developers and other interested people find this community?
You can join the Defold community and the dev team on the Defold forum and on our Discord server.
We’ve seen some wonderful Defold games on GameDistribution, like Fruit Mahjong. What would your advice to GameDistribution developers be, if they want to try their hand at creating a game in Defold?
The problem many new developers have (regardless of game engine) is that they start with something too ambitious. Start with a small scope and try to build something playable early. Test the game a lot and iteratively work your way towards something fun. Focus on the core gameplay loop and think about models of game monetization.
The game will monetize using ads and you need to think about a game design that caters to this. Analyze successful games on GD from a monetization point of view. How are they incorporating ads into their game? What measures have developers taken to optimize the core game loop for ads? Does the game have a meta game? How does the game integrate with rewarded ads?
“It is easy to learn the basics of the Defold game engine quickly thanks to extensive and up-to-date documentation, tutorials and sample projects.“
In 2020, the Defold source code was made widely available and transferred to the Defold Foundation. You’ve seen the change from closed to open software, and later to full open-source. How has that changed your outlook on the software, or maybe even the community?
The fact that the Defold source code is available and that the game engine is developed in the open builds trust, but it’s not a silver bullet. You still need a core development team to develop the engine according to technical best practices and ensure new functionality follows the product’s vision.
The upside is that the community can help out a lot more with development. Defold uses a plugin system where integrations with third party SDKs and systems (such as GameDistribution) are available in open source repositories on GitHub.
These isolated source code repositories make it very easy for the community to contribute improvements.
Could you tell us a little bit more about the Defold Foundation and how it came to be?
Defold used to be a game engine owned by King, who are known for Candy Crush. In 2016, a few years after they acquired it, King decided to make the software available externally.
The community grew so much, that it just made sense to separate the software from the company and move it to its own entity. We decided to make the software free and available to everyone, and since we are now listed as a foundation, everyone can be safe in knowing that Defold is a trusted game engine that will always be free and open.
We now also have six full time developers working on the game engine, so rest assured; it is in very capable hands.
Defold is such a versatile game engine — you can create both 2D and 3D, and most if not all genres are possible! Have you ever created a game yourself?
Yes, sure. I’ve worked professionally with game development for 20 years or so, and created games as a hobby when I was young. The first games I worked on in a professional capacity was for Nokia feature phones back in the early 2000’s.
There were a lot of technical challenges back then, but it was great fun! I also worked on a few titles made in Defold back when Defold was owned by King. One game was a competitive take on Candy Crush!
If you would like to learn more about Defold, you can find all the information you’re looking for on their website.
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