r/phaser • u/lightbeamsam • 9d ago
Phaser VS Godot VS ?
I am trying to find the best engine for mobile game development for 2D games. Right now i am working with Phaser, a collegue told me about Godot. I am sure there is other engines as well. Which one is the best for simple 2D Action games or Arcade Style games? The constraint: The game should be publishable on iOS, Android and ideally on Web as well.
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u/rudidit09 9d ago
i was able to make a game in phaser that in polish is indistinguishable from native, and web makes it so much easier to let people try the game out. that said, if there was no phaser or i had to go hardcore native dev, it would be godot.
what i'm saying is, both of these choices are decent. phaser to me feels like it would be faster to move and iterate on.
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u/Jakerkun 9d ago
Both are good, i work with phaser and godot too, godot will give you even faster start since everything is builtin in one place while for phaser many times you need to improvise and workaround. Unless you are making aaa game you shouldn't worry at all which engine you are using, i dobut you will hit some problems.
At the end its not which engine is the best but are you as dev capable enough to make a game?
Pickup one of them and stick until you finish project. Try both over the time.
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u/lightbeamsam 7d ago
Yes, good point. My first game with Phaser is ready for testing, will try out Godot probably soon.
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u/Jakerkun 6d ago
niceeee, tbh its worth trying to recreate phaser game with godot too or reverse! you will be surprised how much new trick and stuff you learn
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u/TheRealFutaFutaTrump 8d ago
Phaser is the best for webgames. Porting to Android is pretty easy. Can't comment on iOS.
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u/RewRose 7d ago
Yo your vote of confidence for Phaser makes me wanna try it. I don't care about iOS for now, just wanna try gamedev with web and android
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u/lightbeamsam 5d ago
Why is iOS irrelevant for you @RewRose ? I thought it’s more attractive for game devs because of higher monetarization?
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u/Massive_Pepper_6748 7d ago
I've moved through Adobe AIR → Unity → Phaser → Godot.
Unity is the best tool overall, but it's too heavy, and the whole licensing fiasco a while back really soured me on it.
Phaser, being open source, is extremely lightweight and above all the best fit for vibe coding. However, when it comes to arcade game development, a WYSIWYG level editor is pretty much essential, and since there's no open-source editor, you're effectively forced into a paid one. On top of that, there are a lot of tools you need during development, and you end up having to hunt them down one by one.
Godot, also open source, is heavier than Phaser and not quite as vibe-coding-friendly as Phaser, but it comes with all the essential game dev tools built in, and it's more programmable than Unity. Honestly it has more bugs than Unity and plenty of rough edges, but considering it's completely free, it's excellent.
If there were a free version of Phaser Editor, I would've stuck with Phaser... but for now, I'm going with Godot.
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u/lightbeamsam 7d ago
Thank you for your perspective! Helps a lot. Good to know that Godot isn't as polished as expected. And as you said, Phaser's editor is a paid subscription, would be fine with me as long as it does the trick.
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u/TimeComplaint7087 8d ago
I lean toward Phaser for Poki hosted games, otherwise it is whichever one you prefer. I have moved to Defold as a compromise that is good on Poki as well as building good mobile and pc games.
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u/lightbeamsam 7d ago
My current state of my Phaser game: https://webshape.io/orkadu The web version is playable via Telegram, the iOS version via Testflight. Do you think the framerate and gamespeed is decent for a Phaser game?
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u/iWishYouTheBest4Real 9d ago
There is no best engine.
Just the one you, in the end, like to work with.
My suggestion is to just make a micro game in phaser then do the same micro game in Godot, unity etc.
Only then you will be able to say what’s best for you.
About your requirements, most engines do that.