Godot for beginners: where to start
A free, open-source and lightweight engine. The shortest path between an idea and a first playable game.
Godot is a free and open-source game engine, released under the MIT license. It charges no royalties and runs on modest computers, which has made it the entry point for many independent developers.
Three concepts to understand first
Nodes
Everything in Godot is a node: a sprite, a camera, a sound, a collision area. Each node does one thing.
Scenes
A scene is a tree of nodes saved to a file. The player is one scene, the enemy is another, the level is another. Scenes can contain scenes.
Signals
Signals announce that something happened, like a button clicked or an enemy defeated. Other nodes listen and react, without either needing to know the other's internals.
Your first project
Start truly small: a character that moves, an object to collect and a counter on screen. That project already covers movement, collision, signals and interface, which are the foundation of any bigger game.
The official documentation is translated by the community and includes a complete tutorial for a first 2D game. It is the best next step after this article.
