GDevelop vs Clickteam Fusion – Which Engine is Better for My Next Game?

GDevelop general
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Hello everyone,

I’m an indie game developer, and for many years, I’ve been using Clickteam Fusion on and off. Unfortunately, the new version of the engine, announced over a decade ago, still hasn’t been released, and there’s no clear indication if it ever will. I’m planning to return to game development and am debating whether I should stick with Fusion or switch to another, similar engine.

Has anyone here used Clickteam Fusion before and could give an honest comparison between it and GDevelop?

From what I’ve learned, GDevelop is an open-source and offers basic 3D support. Clickteam Fusion doesn’t have native 3D functionality - there’s the Firefly extension, but it’s outdated, no longer actively developed, and works only on PC. I’m planning a project involving many types of minigames and would like to release it on multiple platforms.

I know that Fusion allows exporting games to PC and mobile platforms and offers a service for porting games to consoles. There’s also an external project, “Chowdren,” which provides paid porting services for Fusion and C3 games to consoles. Does GDevelop currently support exporting games to the Nintendo Switch? If not, is creating such a port by an external developer feasible and relatively affordable?

Clickteam Fusion 2.5 Developer is somewhat outdated and has its quirks, but it’s an engine I know well. I’m familiar with its limitations and workarounds, and when bugs occur, fixes are usually delivered relatively quickly. How does this compare to GDevelop? I’ve read that some users feel bug fixes for GDevelop can take a while. I understand that being a free engine comes with limitations, and not everything can be done immediately, but when working on a commercial project, choosing the right engine is critical.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has experience with both engines and could provide insights. Opinions from GDevelop users are also very welcome!

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Yes, but it was over half a decade ago, so this might be outdated:

  • I generally find GDevelop to be far more extendable, and in many cases more performant (games run faster on worse machines).
  • Clickteam has the viewport object, which can work for multiple viewport games (e.g. split screen) pretty easily, although it is very costly on performance. There are some extensions that can do similar concepts in GDevelop but not quite as simple to implement as in Clickteam.
  • Event organizing in GDevelop is much easier than in Clickteam. I find grouping and external event sheets in GD5 allow me to make my game logic much more readible.

Clickteam is still a solid engine for what it does. I feel like GDevelop ends up being a bit more capable due to it’s flexibility.

It does not.

Unfortunately you’d have to check with porting studios, as no one here would be able to tell you those costs (which are usually under NDA)

Unfortunately this is very subjective, especially as many users initially might not understand what is a bug vs it works but not as they (the user) wants vs an optimization needed, etc.

As far as actual engine breaking bugs, they are generally fixed very fast (days) after identifying the source.

Optimization is somewhat variable time from what I’ve seen, depending entirely on how much the current performance is actually impactful or not.

As far as feature enhancements, it depends on the general community demand and contributor willingness to work on it. Some things go from idea to implementation within weeks, some months, some years, some never.

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