# Godot 213 Hacker News commenters recommended Godot and 57 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 2 years (5 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A free, MIT-licensed game engine praised for fast setup, lightweight cross-platform exports and working well with AI agents, though critics cite performance problems and console releases needing commercial forks. ## Why people recommend it - Lightweight and quick to start (4 comments): "Godot from project setup to running on my Android is way more effortless/lightweight experience than doing the way of AndroidStudio and/or Flutter stuff." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46825759)) "what impresses me the most about Godot is how lightweight and self-contained it can be while still being cross-platform on both ends" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46049551)) "Getting up and running in Godot was surprisingly, blindingly fast, so I don't regret picking it at all." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49101634)) - Cross-platform export out of box (4 comments): "Godot from project setup to running on my Android is way more effortless/lightweight experience than doing the way of AndroidStudio and/or Flutter stuff." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46825759)) "what impresses me the most about Godot is how lightweight and self-contained it can be while still being cross-platform on both ends" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46049551)) "I get cross-platform support out-of-the-box. I don't even have to recompile or write platform-specific code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45990641)) - Free, MIT-licensed open source (4 comments): "Having a reasonably stable OSS option has removed the last major argument that I am familiar with for simply using what already exists." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644268)) "If a German college decides 200$ is too much they can use Godot or a variety of free alternatives." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47806228)) "Some projects , like Godot are MIT so contributors can use it for their own commercial projects." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48686613)) - Works well with AI agents (4 comments): "Godot and agents have taken most of the pain I remembered from my childhood attempts at game dev out of the equation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49234577)) "anything with strong conventions and heavy LLM training data (Godot, Phaser, Love2D) will work better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320535)) "It is extremely easy to do, since LLMs can write everything in godot and godot template files too." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47401420)) ## What people warn about - Performance problems and stutters (5 comments): "performance has been a nightmare to the point where I've offloaded most of my code into pure C# and out of Godot" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49101451)) "if they focused on the core engine more, then deltaV: Rings of Saturn wouldn't have odd performance issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47826765)) "although GDScript has performance issues, if you use GDScript it's easy to port to mobile and web games" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896073)) - Buggy renderers, misplaced priorities (4 comments): "Godot is so driven by whatever sounds neat to work on that it has three completely different rendering systems, all buggy and mediocre." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47908229)) "the current maintainer of the renderer portion of the Godot engine suffering through all the bug reports from Android devices" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024913)) "if they focused on the core engine more, then deltaV: Rings of Saturn wouldn't have odd performance issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47826765)) - Limited C# support on platforms (3 comments): "you don't have access to all the NuGet libraries, or even CLR/MSIL abilities, it is a hit and miss depending on what platforms are being targeted" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49908089)) "Godot still has a lot to catch up, especially when considering the folks that rather target consoles and VR headsets with C#." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46015692)) "I've been following the github issue for C# web export and let me tell you: It's not been a priority." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46779151)) - Consoles need commercial forks (2 comments): "Godot still has a lot to catch up, especially when considering the folks that rather target consoles and VR headsets with C#." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46015692)) "Godot isn't quite free if you want to release on consoles since those platforms are only supported by commercial forks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46014569)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Unity](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unity.md): 110 recommend - [Unreal Engine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unreal-engine.md): 104 recommend - [Bevy game engine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bevy.md): 50 recommend - [id Tech engine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/id-tech-engine.md): 26 recommend - [S&box](https://hackerapproved.com/p/s-box.md): 14 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Godot", https://hackerapproved.com/p/godot/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).