Agreed! I don't think there's anything really standing in the way of building high-quality games with Godot. As Godot continues to mature and with the right tools and support for the indie community, it's just a matter of time before there's a breakout hit built with it.

Our company is building some open source game templates that will hopefully spark some cool creations with Godot 4. So far we have templates for a Streets of Rage-type beat-em-up game, a tower defense-style game, and something similar to Binding of Isaac. We're also including some high-quality art assets to go with the templates. We're still a few weeks away from launching, but I hope to post our work on HN when they're ready.

That is a ton of work, thank you. What is your motivation for making the templates open source?

That's a good question and to be honest, we're still figuring it out. Making our templates open source have the benefits of allowing the broader community to contribute, helps make Godot more accessible, and seems to more in the spirit of Godot. Of course we're a business and we're trying to build something sustainable, but right now we're betting on Godot and its community and we think elevating Godot will help us in the long run. Of course, maybe this a terrible idea, but let's find out! Part of the reason I started the company was to try out some off-the-wall ideas.

I think it’s a win-win because while the templates are a wonderful contribution, most of your work will be in the game play, set, and mechanics. You get to help other people along without a significant impact on your own bottom line, I think.

Yes and if everyone did that it would get more and more powerful and easier to get started as a virtuous cycle develops.

I am very interested in something like that. Would you mind giving your company’s name or website so I can find out when it’s out?

The company is Quiver (https://quiver.dev). There's not much to see right now, but we're looking to launch in the next month or two.

Looking forward to seeing them!

GameMaker filled a very specific niche by targeting indie devs with little-to-no coding experience and giving them enough support to make a game (similar to Flash). Maddy Thorsen used GameMaker for Jumper all the way back in 2004, which was really an amazing game that has similar game play elements to her phenomenal game Celeste.

I'm not sure exactly what Godot's niche is, making it harder for it to have breakout hits.

Cruelty Squad[0] really demonstrated to me what incredible things can be done with Godot, but I think the game is to... how to say this... out there? It has an _extremely_ stylised aesthetic. I have a hard time thinking of any game like it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruelty_Squad

Frayhem [1] is an awesome game using Godot with Nim.

Rocket Bot Royale [2] is a game I worked on using Godot. We released it on lots of platforms: Google Play, iOS, mac app store, pc/mac/linux on steam, and several HTML game sites. It has cross platform multiplayer with custom netcode written in c++, and pretty advanced SDF based terrain destruction. I think it's pretty good.

We are currently making a new game using Godot which I'm excited about.

https://rocketbotroyale.winterpixel.io/

https://frayhem.com/en/

Played a few minutes of Rocket Bot Royale and it is pretty fun! I'm so happy that since the demise of Flash, games in the browser have only gotten better.

I'm happy to hear that.

As a game developer, the state of game development is really exciting from a technological point of view. From a business point of view, it is very hard to compete, the market is very saturated. We are hoping to carve out a niche of high quality multiplayer games on the web.

talking about godot and nim, Turing Complete was also developped in godot+nim https://store.steampowered.com/app/1444480/Turing_Complete/

What was your process to getting it on other platforms that Godot does not currently support?

All of those platforms are supported by Godot. Steam is supported through a developed and advanced module. We have a very small amount of custom platform specific code for iOS and Android.

Consoles on Godot are the hard part and thats what W4 is going to offer. I think Switch would be easy as it supports OpenGLES. Xbox and playstation would be harder, but I havent looked into it.

Thanks so much for the inside info

Yeah, its pretty out there. I like it though, because besides the awful aesthetics, the attitude feels very "punk" and even a little countercultural. Its not for everyone and I can't blindly recommend it, but I like it for those reasons.

> I don't think W4 has created any games though

W4 Games is not a game studio. It's a new company specifically for working on Godot and working on the Godot ecosystem, including offering console porting services and similar stuff that can't happen within the open source community because of NDAs and such.

I havent seen that many Godot-powered games, but other than title I myself working on there is very promising game to be published by Raw Fury. I played the demo for several hours and had tons of fun, it called Dome Keeper. It's game with smaller scale, but it astonishingly beautiful and gameplay is addictive as hell. So there are Godot games with high production quality.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637320/Dome_Keeper/

Sonic Colors Ultimate was made with Godot, if I recall correctly. It's not "huge" in the sense of a major AAA title, but it's still a big franchise.

Unfortunately, at no fault of Godot itself, Sonic Colors Ultimate isn't really a great title to advertise Godot, due to the increased issues on this version of the game.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Colors#Reception_2

That's unfortunate, I guess it makes sense that Godot was used then. Tight budget, and it shows :(.

It’s incredible really that these guys are talking about using Godot on consoles when it is in such bad shape.

Even if it’s a bait and switch, and they spend 100% of the funds on just like, making the engine better, $8m isn’t going to get you to 1/20th of Unity or Unreal. It is an insurmountable niche.

> $8m isn’t going to get you to 1/20th of Unity or Unreal

The size and complexity of these engines can be a disadvantage, because not every game needs the features they provide. For some use-cases, it can be easier to work with a simpler engine with fewer abstractions, a smaller API, and a shorter learning-curve.

Look at what happened with Blender. It's displacing Autodesk! Maya and 3DS Max were both once "irreplaceably" entrenched.

I'd argue that Godot already has a better experience for 2d dev than Unity and Unreal

Pretty much anything is better for 2D than Unreal Engine. But yeah, Godot does a better job with 2D than Unity, and it's much simpler to get started with.

I'd argue the only significant thing it's lacking, an actual practical concern for indie game development, is a good asset store. Saying Godot is useless because it will never have feature parity with UE5 is, of course, extremely silly and not a practical concern for most games.

I disagree. I find that it is delightful to develop for, especially for 2d games. Miziziziz made a full-3d game in Godot, and did a good job with it. There were a few glitches he caught post-release, but those were not because of the engine.

> <anyone> made a full-3d game in Godot

Why is this considered a notable achievement?

I think in the future “summer projects” like Blender did in the beginning was pretty good. So have a few veteran leads make a game with some of the best talents. They could pick a theme (say a minecraft clone, or a FPS) and slowly up the difficulty and technical feats required (which in turn will drive development)

I though the Deponia series of adventure games was made with Godot, but it seems it was only used for a port of the first game. Instead Deponia used a proprietary engine called Visionaire studio.

> Basically, we need a game to do to Godot, what Undertale and Nuclear Throne did to GameMaker

Wasn't GameMaker big a long, long time before Undertale existed?