Unity Engine made a lot of enemies out of friends when it updated its pricing scheme. Unity, whose reputation was based on its great toolsets, great community, and ease-of-access, decided to include a new, vague pricing scheme based on installs that could turn an indie game’s success into a nightmare for the developer. Installs, not downloads or purchases – installs. You can buy a game and have to install it more than once for any number of reasons, which game developers are well aware of. Hitting the pricing wall could render your fun little indie game a financial black hole for you. There were genuine worries that older games made in Unity would be pulled from marketplaces. Free games were not exempt. Were pirated copies of games included? Nobody knew! Unity wrecked its reputation overnight. Unity pulled back a little bit after that announcement, clarifying some things and apologizing for others, but the damage was done, and potential users are incredibly wary of signing up to learn with Unity now. So where will users go now if they’re interested in learning how to make games with an affordable engine?
GoDot is one possible answer! It’s free. It’s open-source. There are plenty of both free and paid classes online about how to use it.
However, the main question isn’t whether alternatives exist. The real question is: is it good? Godot is not considered the best engine for total beginners to learn on, but many open-source softwares have a learning curve simply because they’re open source. Look at Linux – needing books and courses to get it running right doesn’t stop its many fans worldwide.
In the same way you might not want to invest in the 30$ a tube oil paints when you’re just learning how to paint (ESPECIALLY if you’re trying to figure out if you even enjoy painting), many engines cost more than the newbie is willing to invest, and as such they never get started. Starting completely from scratch is not really an option either: a beginner might be able to manage a simple 2-D game from scratch in a language like Python, but anything much more complex will be lightyears beyond them, an even more intimidating barrier than GoDot could ever be. And how many projects really want to be 2-D today? The truly determined will find a way (see Undertale, a world-wide bestseller game that is famously poorly coded), the people sitting on the fence may become invested if they can just get a feel for it before buying into an easier product, and the people who weren’t going to complete their project will be able to let go without succumbing to sunk cost fallacy and making themselves miserable.
That’s not even counting what more experienced game creators say about GoDot, which is generally positive – GoDot is considered a worthwhile choice among all of the engines available depending on what you’re aiming to create. If ‘free but a little tough’ sounds good to you, jump in!
