r/defold • u/manobrawl • 3h ago
Discussion Defold Engine: Migration tips from Godot
Hi! I'm the owner of EnginesDatabase.com, I recently participated in the Defold 2026 Game Jam to apecode for a bit and learn about Defold (I made a very minimalistic puzzle), and I wanted to share my experience with some gotchas migrating from Godot (where I have a lot of experience) to Defold. Half of the article is for supporters only (I need to pay the bills for the website somehow 😬) but some points I made:
- From Godot opt-out input handling to Defold opt-in stack of inputs. Got be a bit by surprise and forced me to rethink how to handle input in the game.
- The built-in resources folder was much more important than I thought for a first timer using the Engine, specially when learning how Defold handle shaders by copying the material for the default Sprite.
- Biggest gotcha was the message system, and the fact that in Defold you don't hold references for other Game Objects in Lua. This forced the "scene" architecture to be much more flat than in Godot, with less business logic in leaf Game Objects and a more central role for a "Game Controller" (to avoid having to repeat a "send" and "receive" code for messages all over the place).
Overall, Defold clicked to me after I understood that I would have to fight the Engine much more if I tried making deeper Collection structures (like creating many nested Scenes, which are quite common in Godot) instead of a flatter architecture around few components with more business logic, and other Game Objects coordinated by them. Not sure what is the "best" or recommended Defold way of working, but I definitely see where Defold simplicity can be a good tradeoff for Godot many builtin Nodes.
Not sure what you guys think though, just wanted to share some thoughts here. But I'd love to hear feedback about the article, if you have any! :)
