Jan 15, 2021 4 min read issue

Godotes #4 - Game Jams (Part 1)

Godot is the Number 4 most used Engine for Game Jams on Itch

There's been 98104 submitted to 5839 jams created on itch. Turns out that's a ton of data to go through, even if I'm only focusing on Godot. So this will be part 1 of 2 issues about Godot in game jams.

Today we're focusing on usage compared to other engines. Next issue, I'll be taking a look at the results. I wanna see how games made with Godot and Godot developers are performing.

First, the numbers:

📈 5839 Game Jams in total
⌨️ 303050 (non-unique) developers joined
🕹️ 98104 Submissions in total

A cool couple of details: of all those Jams, only 42 there were no submissions.

Still, only roughly 33% of developers submit to Jams they'd joined.

I have to admit though: That's a lot more than what I was expecting, having joined around half a dozen jams myself and only submitting once.

❔ What's Godot's Number?

❣️ 2431

That's how many games submitted to a Jam were made with the engine (and have a "Made With" Category!)

So, 2.5%. Not too bad, once you take into account that:

Not everyone uses the "Made With" category (I'll have that number on the next Issue)
Unity, the behemoth of Game dev (at least on Itch), only has ~20% of the market.

1.2/10 of what Unity gets it's not bad at all, for a relatively new Engine like Godot.

What's even more: Godot is #4 overall

I think it's fair to assume that the difficulty of an engine directly affects the number of developers using it and that among all of the engines on that list, Unreal is probably the toughest one to get into. My guess is that if the engine wasn't so famous, it would be a lot lower.

On the contrary, and just by the volume of materials and tutorials, Unity should be the easiest.

If we also account for the fact that all this data comes from Game jam submissions, where time is of the utmost importance, the effect should be even more obvious.

Even so...I'm still surprised by Unreal's numbers.

I get that itch is filled with new developers (Hello! 👋) and that most of the games on the site are 2D, so I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that much, but still, it's nice to see Godot doing so much better than one of the biggest names in the industry.

If I can manage to finish in time, next week I'm gonna have some charts showing Godot's advancement through the years.

In the meantime, I have a Godot Wild Jam entry to finish.

📰 Godot news round-up

🆕 Gotm.io Jam #1

gotm.io is launching a new, monthly, Godot game jam. And this time, at least for the first edition, there is $80 worth of Prizes:

The guys at GDQuest published 📹"Unity VS Godot: How Do They Compare?". Two interviews of two developers who've used both Unity and Godot.

One of the developers is DevDuck, in case you're looking for a good YouTube channel to follow

📹Godot GamePad v.0.9.1

I didn't know this was a thing until a couple of days ago. Now I'm in love with it

Godot GamePad v0.9.1 Working! from godot

The idea is that you just incorporate the server-side into your game by downloading the script from Github and then have people download the app from the app store or google play. That way you can get local multiplayer working where ever your computer is! This should make party games more available! - scrubswithnosleeves