Why I Chose GDevelop Over Unity, Godot, and Construct (5 Reasons, 1 Dealbreaker)
I ship one small 2D game to Google Play and web portals every month. I don’t do 3D and I don’t need fancy rendering. I need an engine that gets a finished game out the door without a fight. After months of testing, I put my time into GDevelop instead of Godot, Unity, or Construct 3. Here are the five reasons, the one thing it can’t do, and who should skip it. 1. Event sheets beat dense code Event sheets are visual logic: Conditions and Actions. If this is true, do that. It’s color-coded, spaced out, and readable at a glance. I’m dyslexic, so walls of symbols and syntax are where I lose hours. In a text editor I’m hunting for a typo. In an event sheet I’m reading my game logic. I can work for hours without the mental fatigue. 2. Behaviors you drop on objects Solo dev means you’re the programmer, artist, sound designer, and tester. I don’t have time to rebuild a platformer controller every month. Drop the Platformer Object behavior on a sprite and you have a running, jumping character in about a minute. The behaviors are tested and compatible, so I skip the boilerplate and start on what makes the game mine. 3. Export that doesn’t eat my week When you ship monthly, every extra hurdle is a chance to miss your deadline. In some engines, the Android SDK, certificates, and build paths can swallow an afternoon. In GDevelop, exporting to Android or web is a few steps inside the editor. That’s the real reason I can ship on a schedule. 4. Everything lives in one place Asset store: sprites, sounds, and music without leaving the app Extensions: community extensions in the editor when built-ins aren’t enough Tutorials: built in, so I’m not trusting a three-year-old video Less context switching means more flow state, and flow is what keeps a solo project moving. 5. Open source means nobody can reprice me In 2023 Unity announced a fee structure that would have hit games already released. They walked much of it back in 2024, but the lesson stuck: don’t build your income on one company’s pricing decisions. With open source, the rules can’t change under me mid-project. The one thing GDevelop can’t do It’s not built for heavy 3D or AAA-scale projects. If you’re building a 3D open-world RPG, pick something else. And if your goal is a job at a big studio, learn Unity, Unreal, or Godot, because that’s what they hire for. Takeaways Pick the tool that helps you finish games, not the one with the longest feature list Event sheets are legitimate, and “real coders” don’t get a vote on your productivity If syntax drains you, a visual engine is an accessibility win Shipping is a skill, and easy export makes you practice it more Want to see this in action? I post a new GDevelop mechanic every few days: https://youtu.be/zwBISSibep4 Your turn: What engine are you using, and what’s the one thing that slows you down? Drop it in the comments. If you’re on the fence about GDevelop, ask me anything and I’ll answer. Follow me here for more solo dev workflows.