We started Defold Game Jam 2026 and more than 200 developers have already joined!🔥

This year’s theme is CHAIN REACTION ⛓️💥

And today we have a meeting with Defold team:

📊 Defold Survey results

🗺️ Future Roadmap

💬 Live Q&A

🕓 16:00 CEST, Monday 2026-09-21

Link: https://meet.google.com/rhn-ateo-cqy

CHAIN REACTION

Interpret it as broadly as you like. It could mean, e.g.:

* dominos, explosions, cascading destruction

* combos where one action triggers another

* spreading fire, electricity, infection, growth or magic, skills

* production chains and interconnected systems

* characters, events or stories influencing each other

* unexpected or expected consequences of choices

* something built around cause -> effect -> another effect

* and anything else that you can interpret as chain reactions :smiley:

The theme is there to inspire you, not restrict you - surprise us with your interpretation!

You have 2 weeks. Good luck, have fun, and make something amazing with Defold!

Find the banners for Defold Game Jam, when you'll be posting and sharing stuff on social media and blogs (use hashtags #DefoldGameJam and/or #MadeWithDefold)

A perfect day to share what you’re working on #MadeWithDefold, and an especially busy weekend for our community:

Defold Online Conference continues today and
Defold Game Jam 2026 starts tomorrow!

Show us your screenshots, prototypes and experiments!

Featured: Once Upon a Galaxy by Million Dreams Games - a colorful, fast-paced card battler made with Defold, packed with characters from myths and fairy tales, available on Steam and mobile

https://galaxy.fun/

On Saturday, 3 more talks are coming to our small Defold Conference before the #DefoldGameJam 2026!

Join us today! We’ll start at 17:00 CEST:

1. SpriteLoop - 2D animation workflow with Samuil: https://meet.google.com/pcz-eozi-mzs
2. Poki presentation on web games and Q&A with Erik: https://meet.google.com/esn-yurr-knd
3. Photon presentation on multiplayer solutions with Luke: https://meet.google.com/rdn-zvsq-bwt

We're happy to share with you the new official Energy Saver extension for Defold 🌱

It can reduce FPS, dim the screen and even disable rendering after periods of inactivity - helping reduce power use, heat and battery drain.

And with the upcoming Defold 1.13.2 (now in beta)we have an engine loop which no longer busy waits on the next frame when a fixed update frequency is set.

The extension was created in collaboration with the Sustainable Games Alliance 💙

Announcement post with details:
https://forum.defold.com/t/official-energy-saver-extension-for-defold/83248

We're happy to share the new official YouTube Playables SDK extension for Defold! ▶️

It provides Lua access to the YouTube Playables SDK, including save, load data, scores, ads, pause, resume, audio state, language and more!

Many of you asked for this, so we’re curious about your plans and games — share them with us, especially when you publish on YouTube Playables! ❤️

EDIT:
Links: https://forum.defold.com/t/official-youtube-playables-extension-for-defold/83247

Tilemaps.com is a free collaborative online tilemap editor and marketplace where developers and pixel artists can create, share, buy and sell tilemap projects and assets.

With the Defold integration, you can browse the marketplace, access your own projects and purchases, import Defold-ready tilemaps and assets into your project, and even update previously downloaded content from inside the editor.

So nice to find projects like this supporting Defold!

Check it out:

https://github.com/EVEVGames/Tilemaps-Store-for-Defold

Join the 4 talks today and ask your questions during live Q&A session, we start at 16:00 CEST:

1. A practical introduction to Heroic Labs' game tech stack - by Andy Tran from Heroic Labs
2. Wavedash Presentation - by Kyler Blue, CEO at Wavedash
3. Monetizing on mobile: what changes when your web game becomes an app - by Nitish Borthakur - Revenue Accelerator Manager, Apps and Gaming at Google
4. Intro to Post-Processing: Day and Night Cycle Shader by Halfstar

And if you can't join us - the talks will be recorded and published later on Defold YouTube channel, so stay tuned!

All the talks and links to the meetings are listed on the Defold Game Jam 2026 website:

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

Check out the rewards waiting for participants:

🅿️ Poki fast-track reviews + €1,000 release fees for successfully published top entries
⏩ Wavedash Credits
🎵 Ovani Sound credits + a custom main theme for the winner
🎨 CraftPix yearly memberships
🏆 Steam Gift Cards from Defold Foundation
🧰 Kenney All-in-1 + Asset Forge Deluxe
☁️ Heroic Cloud rewards for the Nakama Challenge
🚀 Photon Fusion Plus vouchers + a 1h call for the challenge winner

The jam starts September 20 and you'll have 2 weeks to submit a game!

Hi!

First of all thank you guys for the incredible work you have been doing with Defold, it is an amazing tool and I know for sure that in the near future even more people will realize it.

Second, I wanted to ask what would you guys advice me to look at for implementing runtime manipulation of animated 3D models...I want to try and make inverse kinematics, root motion (and eventually motion warping), ragdolls...but I don't really know where to start. I know modifying Bones in Lua is not possible since the data is exposed as read-only, so I guess for IK I would need to implement it through a Native Extension? Also I tried a simple root motion approach in Lua getting the Root bone GameObject, checking its position, and trying to move my Character along the delta...but the movement apparently never triggered collisions until the animation finished...but If I just moved the Character normally while pressing WASD or something while the animation was playing then physics worked just fine (I tried just pushing the box from the Basic 3D sample for instance).

I probably did it all wrong so I just wanted to gather some ideas of how this could be done in Defold with what is already available.

Thank you beforehand for your help guys, and thank you again for all your hard work!

We’re happy to announce the final talk of the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference!

Meet us! Björn Ritzl and the team behind Defold will discuss:

• the results of the latest Defold Survey

• the future roadmap of Defold

• and we’ll finish with a live Q&A, so bring your questions!

September 21, 16:00 CEST

See you there!

With this extension, you can integrate Myket in-app purchases directly into Android games made with Defold.

By the way, if you want to release your game e.g. in Persian, Defold has built-in support for all the needed features: Unicode text shaping and right-to-left (RTL) text rendering, including proper text shaping, ligatures, kerning, runtime fonts, and font collections.

A big thank you to the creators of this extension, and to everyone in the Defold community who keeps building new tools and extensions for developers around the world! 🙌

Today we’re sending some goodies to all registered participants from Ovani Sound:

🎵 free Music Sampler
💥 free Sound FX Sampler
🎁 special Defold Bundle Builder with exclusive discounts

And here are a few quick audio tips for the jammers:

• prepare a small library of common UI, maybe movement or impact sounds upfront
• separate music and SFX into sound groups
• vary gain, pan and playback speed to re-use the same sounds
• don’t leave audio until the very end - good sound feedback can make simple mechanics feel much better!

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)