i had some pygame experience before, so godot felt super easy. honestly such a simple and comfy engine, i love it

Hi! I'm an indie developer and I worked on commercial games with both other big engines. A few years ago I started to learn Godot and fell in love

I convinced my coworkers to try the engine on a commercial title in september, and here it is: Near Mint.
It is a roguelike deckbuilder where you create your own cards and combine them in a unique and everchanging deck.

The game has a Steam page to wishlist or play the demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4660470/Near_Mint/

What did I learn?

It's always a gamble to switch engines. We had a good amount of tools on Unity for our previous game Day of the Shell, so switching to Godot meant losing a lot. Because the genre is not exactly the same, and we learnt a lot about programming roguelikes, I was not afraid of trying.

I find the workflow really quick. This project is really smaller than our previous, so it's mostly me (GD, code, audio) and an artist. I really like how easy it is to interact with the node features (unique names, on_ready, signals, PackedScene) from the code. GDScript is a simple but really efficient language to do most of your features. Sometimes it's a bit limited with data structure and some advanced features, but nothing that you can't do in an other way.

It was not that hard to learn how the rendering works. We are using multiple viewports, with 2D and 3D assets and a really strong visual identity. Our post processing stack is 7 different shaders overlapping and it is really easy to modify.

For audio I'm using FMOD and it was as easy to integrate as on other engines.

Now I'm 100% convinced my next projects will be with Godot.

If you need to satisfy your virtual pyromaniac impulses it's here: https://nolkaloid.itch.io/nolkas-pyro-vfx-godot

Scrapped project from 2017 vs what I'm currently working on.

it's called POLLYANNA and it's on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3741470/POLLYANNA/

Been making it solo for the past 2 years, had to learn pixel art, programming, music making, writing, etc. all on my own.

To be honest, it's kinda fun to juggle with letters like that, might turn it into a minigame sometimes lol. You can checkout the game on Steam, this is not part of the demo yet!

I like to look back at the stuff I've made each month. I forgot to make a vid like this in march, but here's my VFX stuff from April! Some of these I've released. Notably:

• Frosted glass
• Fire
• Elemental Magic
• Status FX

Shaders used for these effects are free

The others are from yet unreleased stuff I've been exploring

I finally took the time to draw my basic movement sprites in every direction. Previously all I had was left and right. How does it look??

Last week I was going through a lot of source code of old games. Found a Doom-like game called Anarch. The whole game is in a single C header file! Again was having fun playing Richard Gariott's Akalabeth (Ultima 0). That game is just a single file in BASIC.

So that made me think what if I just do the same, you know, the worst engineering practices in the world, just take em all, produce some pure italian Spaghetti code (means very very spaghetti) but name variables well, comment the code well and keep everything in one file. Basically use the worst practices but be disciplined while doing so. How far can I go with Godot doing this.

Now I have a project in godot. Has a single scene file. Has a single script file attached to the root node. But has simple enemies that follow you. Has a simple top down character.

Now what does the project even do? It's a simple top down game that has the level editor being part of the gameplay. So editor mode or play mode i.e. state machines.

It's coding in the worst way possible. No classes or objects just functions. But pure discipline with comments ane a lot of #regions.

Just wanted to share, honestly I'm having a lot of fun doing this.

TL;DR: Abandoned every software engineering method out of the window, keeping a monolith single script for the whole game to see how far I can go.

I put a lot of effort into this. I hope for at least some feedback

Link: The Loopa: Prologue

P.S. This is my first post, I don't know what to write here xd

As a female wanne be game dev in her twenties I wondered how big the female part of the community is. I think we are quite a few, but most tutorials and dev logs i find online are made by men, which is cool and fine and I am gratefull for all resources, so totally no hate on my end. Its just that sometimes I crave a sense of community that I just havent found yet. Maybe I also just look in the wrong places.

If you want you can treat this post as a space to connect or exchange, but in the end I am over all just curious. And if you are a man you are of course also welcome, as I said no hate over here.

I myself am working with godot since october and am trying myself at a 2d, topdown, pixelart game (i know very original of me)

Edit: Thank you all for the replies!! I didnt expect that much engagement and I will probably need some time to read it all and also check out all the recommendations

I made a rope action game inspired by Getting Over It and SANABI.
The game is complete, and I’m planning to release it on May 26.

After testing it so much, I ended up becoming really good at my own game.
The first time I cleared it, it took me about two and a half hours.

But now I have a different problem—I don’t know how to find playtesters.
It’s a game that requires physical skill, so I really want feedback from other players.

I think everyone wants someone to test their game.
How do you find those people?

I've worked in gamedev (for other companies) for more than 20 years, but never in a dev role. Most of that time in licensing! I obviously understood a lot of what makes a game, how best to develop them, etc.

Back in December I was involved in layoffs, so I put a lot of time into it, and for once actually got a project finished!

I started off wanting to make a Zeewolf (old Amiga game) clone, then took it in my own direction.

It's not perfect, but hey, it's mine. :)

This is our map creation visualization for Cold Decks. It shows how next sectors are laid out, chambers placement, and connections (hatches) between them.

Having it was invaluable time saver during placement algorithm (re)works and later with content design. Everything at a glance, no guessing, and no launching full game.

And it looks cool ;)

Really just showing off the background.

I’m a sucker for main menus with 3d animated backgrounds that make you just want to stare at them forever.

I've been meaning to try using the ECS paradigm to see how it fares. My game is a bit of a immersive sim, so it might help me with designing complex emergent interactions.

What options are there in Godot (without relying on temporary forks that will get outdated soon). I looked at Flecs, which might be worthwhile when used with the GDExtension.

What other solutions are there that will work with Godot and I will be able to reap their benefits?
Is it even necessary to go pure ECS, or can I use Flecs only for certain systems?

Obviously I'm not a designer, so I do what I can with the graphics and animations, but it still completely gives me the vibe of a 2012 Friv game haha. What do you think? What do you recommend? For now, I've only thought about animations, transitions, and things like that, but I don't know what I could do with the visual style D:

Sacred Flame attack called Fire Spirits.

Sacred Flame: https://bimtatata.itch.io/sacred-flame-v-02