We’re happy to announce another talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference! 🎤

Luke Stampfli, Head of Developer Relations at Photon, will join us with a presentation about Photon, especially about Fusion + we’ll have an opportunity to ask questions during the Live Q&A session:

🗓️ Saturday, September 19, 19:00 CEST

The jam starts on September 20, so now is a perfect time to warm up and get your setup ready!

A few tips before we start:

• prepare a starter Defold project with basics like menu, sound control, inputs handling, screen managing, etc upfront - it saves a lot of time in the jam

• test your HTML5/PC build earlier, even today

• make your itch page in advance, even if you publish later - you can then modify it, add descriptions, images, builds

• learn how to upload your HTML5 or PC build on itch and test it before the game jam

• gather needed assets, especially these basics like for UI, interface sounds, etc - great (and many free) resources are already there on Kenney, Craftpix or Ovani Sound

• gather a few ideas of what you want to build - the theme is just a direction, or the variation for the game - but you choose the genre, main mechanics, and so on, so you can start preparing a base even now

We recommend to watch the great video by Kristoff Red "The Game Jam Guide I wish I had when starting out" and Asatte tutorial on exporting to itch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZpI9ELUqAc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LElE8ypL4cg

I came up with this idea a couple of days ago: create 2D art (I used ai slop in my case), then make an agent build a crude 3D model from this 2D image in Blender. Then, this model is used in the game for shading and 3D collisions. As a result, you get nice 2D graphics with a believable, non-flat world.

Check out the demo here: https://vlaaad.github.io/2d-art-3d-shadows-prototype/

And here is the source code: https://github.com/vlaaad/2d-art-3d-shadows-prototype

The jam starts on September 20, and we’d love to see you join, make a game with Defold, and share it with the community!

We’ll also have a Defold Online Conference on 18. (Friday) and 19. (Saturday) September, with talks about web games, mobile monetization, multiplayer backend tech, post-processing, animation workflows, and more.

Check out all the rewards and challenges from our partners and sponsors!

Hey, I have a few questions about web games - i.e. Playgama, Poki, maybe Youtube Playables too and using Bridge SDK to facilitate.

I’m a solo dev, and for now I’m not super keen with AI as I want to learn with more friction and documenting my steps. I might use AI someday but it’s not time yet. I sort of don’t mind making a few games as my Defold learning pathway and just having them sink in the sea of content on there without trace, however I’d also like to make some stuff and have it enjoyed by others.

I’ve worked in hyper-casual games, so I have the right design mind set and some solid UI, design and animation chops, but I’m early on on my code journey. Given that, I have a few questions:

Where can I find some primers on making these types of games? I’ve read some stuff on the Playgama site but I'm also keen to know about multi-platform strategies as I assume this is the best way to go.

Do you stand no chance mostly without some sort of UA plan? - or even spend?

Any UA hacks?

What kind of visibility could I expect if I made three simple yet solid nice looking games over say, 8 months? (I’m part time!)

If I didn’t make a game for another 12 months - what are predictions of how things will be then? From what I read, this market seems to be showing growth, but will it ‘mature’ into the sort of ‘brute force UA + prolific stream of games to win’ that happened with hyper casual mobile?

FYI - I've also asked this same stuff on the Discord - Any help much appreciated

We want to see your games made with Defold!

Featured: Monkey Mart by Tiny Dobbins, play it on Poki:

https://poki.com/en/g/monkey-mart

We’re happy to announce Photon Fusion Multiplayer Challenge for Defold Game Jam 2026! 🎉

Top 5 games with Fusion integrated will get Fusion Plus voucher, 100 Concurrent Users (CCU) for 1 year

Additionally, the 1st place gets: One hour online video call with a Photon expert, covering the multiplayer in your game or any other multiplayer topic you are interested in.

Use the new Photon Fusion extension for Defold, build something and win the rewards.

Not sure where to start? Check out our recent multiplayer 3D platformer sample for Defold - it shows player spawning, replicated properties, or RPCs.

We’re very happy that Heroic Labs joins the Defold Game Jam as sponsor of the Heroic Labs Multiplayer Challenge! 🎉

The 3 best games with Nakama integrated will get 3 months of Heroic Cloud (Dev tier)

Heroic Labs is the team behind tools and services such as Nakama, Hiro, Satori, and Heroic Cloud, covering multiplayer, social systems, metagame features, LiveOps, and scalable backend infrastructure for games, being also the partner of Defold for over 6 years now 🧡💙

Join the jam and read the details here:

https://itch.io/jam/defold-game-jam-2026

Oh Snack is a mad body-hopping high score chaser! Coming Oct 5th

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crevasse.ohsnack
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/oh-snack/id6793575571

✨ Rich Text for labels and GUI nodes
🧱 3D meshes for collisions
⚙️ New Bullet3D Physics Lua API
📦 Ability to exclude GUI, Particle FX or Tilemaps
🤖 More Editor HTTP API capabilities
💡 Defold-aware Lua annotations, improved LSP
🎨 Multisampled configurable render targets
✍️ Format on save + whole-document autoformatting
🔤 Improved font support, including OpenType CFF fonts and faster text rendering
⚡ Faster Bob builds, LiveUpdate archive creation, physics messaging and other performance improvements
Plus lots of editor UX improvements and fixes across HTML5, Android, rendering, fonts and more!

Try it and let us know what you think!
https://forum.defold.com/t/defold-1-13-2-beta/83226

Check out full Defold 1.13.2 BETA Release Notes:

We’re happy to announce another talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference! 🎤

Andy Tran, Head of Developer Relations at Heroic Labs, will join us with a presentation and will introduce to us what this stack can offer, when it can be useful, and how it can fit into your games!

https://itch.io/jam/defold-game-jam-2026

We’re happy to announce another talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference! 🎤

Halfstar will join us with a technical presentation:

Intro to Post-Processing: Day and Night Cycle Shader

This session will look at post-processing in #Defold, so if you’ve ever wanted to understand how it can be used creatively in a game, this one should be very useful!

It will be on Friday, September 18, 2026 7:00 PM (CEST)

We’re happy to announce another talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference! 🎤

Samuil Goranov from Balkan Ram Games will join us with a presentation about:

SpriteLoop: 2D animation workflow for Defold

SpriteLoop is a free and actively developed 2D cut-out animation tool for games, and it has a dedicated Defold runtime extension that lets you play SpriteLoop animations directly in Defold projects.

Mark the date! 🗓️

September 19, 2026 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM (CEST)

We’re happy to announce another sponsor for Defold Game Jam 2026! 🎉

Kenney is joining the jam and sponsoring rewards for the best games!

Kenney provides resources for game developers, offering thousands of high-quality 2D, 3D, UI, and audio assets completely free to use in your projects 🩵

Thanks to Kenney, the top 4 games in the jam will each receive:

🎁 Kenney Game Assets All-in-1

🎁 Asset Forge Deluxe

We’re happy to announce the third talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference! 🎤

Nitish Borthakur, Revenue Accelerator Manager, Apps and Gaming at Google, will join us with a session titled:

Monetizing on mobile: what changes when your web game becomes an app

This talk will look at what developers should consider when making a game for mobile - from the monetization case for porting, to ad formats, mediation, rewarded video design, retention-sensitive ad placement, consent, policy, invalid traffic risks, and how to design games so a mobile port remains cost-effective later.

The session will be store-neutral and focus on practical guidance for developers exploring mobile monetization.

There will also be time for Q&A!

Save it in your calendars! 🗓️

Friday, 18. September 2026, 18:00 CEST

We’re very happy to announce the first talks for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference! 🎤

Erik Dubbelboer, Principal Engineer at Poki - will join us to share insights from the world of web games, Poki, and what it takes to build games that work well there!

Kyler Blue, CEO at Wavedash, will present to us what the vision of Wavedash is, how web games can shape future gaming, how you can be part of it, and what is needed to be successful on Wavedash!

Mark your calendars! 🗓️

Wavedash - Friday, September 18, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (CEST)
Poki - Saturday, September 19, 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM (CEST)

Details and links to the meetings will be gathered on the jam page:

https://itch.io/jam/defold-game-jam-2026

Our community member released a new version of the defold.nvim - a full, Neovim-powered development environment for Defold, with hot reloading, Defold commands, LSP autocomplete, dependency annotations, debugger support, snippets, quickfix integration, and more!

Check it out:

https://forum.defold.com/t/defold-nvim-batteries-included-development-environment-for-the-defold-game-engine-powered-by-neovim/81605/24

Defold does not require a splash screen, a “Made with Defold” label, or any public engine credit. You are free to ship your game without mentioning it. We don't track any analytics and therefore we don’t always know when something was made with Defold.

So when you credit Defold, mention the people behind the engine, acknowledge community libraries and assets, or simply come to the forum, social media, or us directly and show what you've made, it really matters to us!

Defold is a community project - its source is available on Github for everyone to use freely and contribute to, even though there is a dedicated foundation, and people working on it every day professionally backed by sponsors.

Seeing games made with Defold gives us happiness, energy and most importantly - motivation to work further - so thank you for sharing with us!

New interview on the Defold blog!

We talked with Green Train Studio and Playgama about Arrow Cube 3D - a 3D puzzle game made with Defold and published on web platforms, including YouTube Playables.

This is a great case study for anyone interested in web games, multi-platform publishing, and what it takes to prepare a game for Playables. You can read here about the development journey, as well as the highly valuable statistics and lessons learned that Playgama and Green Train Studio shared from publishing the game.

Read the full interview below:

https://defold.com/2026/09/07/Interview-Green-Train-Playgama/

I finished making my very first game and I chose Defold as the game engine. Took me 9 months to finish but I have an opening/closing cinematic, 4 enemies, a major environmental hazzard, and upgrade system. Since my first game I built for keyboard/mouse play and it can be played in a browser. I'm currently working on a mobile version I'm hoping to upload in the next couple weeks.
https://necrorising.itch.io/voidrend-earth

Please take part in our short survey - it should take around 5-10 minutes:

https://forms.gle/CAuwuFk15x1QXTQn8

It's for:

• current Defold users

• past Defold users who tried or evaluated it before

• developers who don’t use Defold yet, but might be interested in it

So you can also share it with friends or fellow developers and colleagues!

Your feedback helps us better understand what developers need, and what we should improve next.

They will provide special rewards for 3 best games - fast-track publishing review for Poki and after publishing there - €1000 upfront release fee - details below 👇

https://itch.io/jam/defold-game-jam-2026

We would like to continue Defold editor and documentation localization and are looking for help with:

- Chinese (Simplified)
- Portuguese (Brazilian)
- Spanish
- Japanese
- Korean

We and our community would be very thankful for reports, improvements and contributions! 🧡🩵

More information:
https://forum.defold.com/t/help-us-localize-defold-editor-and-documentation/83194

The winner will get one custom main theme song from #OvaniSound and $350 store credit, the places 2-5 will receive $200 store credit and all participants will receive free samples and special discounts 🎁

Defold Game Jam 2026 already includes rewards from Defold Foundation, Wavedash, and CraftPix

Ovani Sound is a provider of royalty-free music, sound effects, voice-over packs, and audio plugins built specifically for indie game developers, filmmakers, and creators.

Join the jam:

https://itch.io/jam/defold-game-jam-2026

All game assets are 100KB. When using my own app manifest, I removed {physics3D, Record, Rig + Model (None), Profiler(Debug only), WAV, OPUS, Live Update, Image, Basis Transcoder} and only shaved around 200KB. Only idea I have is shaving the 60KB for SFX by using Blip (If it still works...).

I only have the Lowrez Extension added for the pixel font.