Game Lab · Instant-load 2D

Real-engine 2D that’s playing
before they lose interest

On mobile web, loading time is the product: every second of spinner loses players. Defold — the engine behind professional web-game portals — compiles real engine features into a ~3MB bundle. This lab’s law: first playable frame in under three seconds on Fast 3G.

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The whole engine is smaller than one photo

A complete Defold web bundle — engine, game logic, physics, particles — weighs about 2.5MB before your art. For comparison: a typical engine wasm is 35MB. On a phone connection that’s the difference between playing and leaving.

Web bundle size
Defold engine + gamewasm + loader + assets
2.7MB
Typical engine web exportsame class of features
35MB

The three-second law

Every piece is load-tested on a simulated Fast-3G connection, and the first playable frame must arrive in under three seconds — measured, recorded in the ledger, and enforced as a gate. Over budget means the cycle stays open, full stop.

Fast-3G load audit2.4s — pass
0.0–0.9sengine wasm streamed + compiled
0.9–1.8sgame archive + first atlas
1.8–2.4sfirst playable frame · input live
PLAYING
The gate: ≤3.0s to playing, or the cycle does not close.

Small, not simple

Tiny bundles don’t mean toy games: sprite atlases from Blender-rendered, mocap-animated sheets, tilemap worlds, box2d physics, GPU particles — real engine features under a message-passing architecture professionals recognize.

Inside a 1.4MB game archive
2 atlaseshero + world, mocap-animated frames, packed
Tilemap + tilesourceautotiled level, 3 layers
box2d + particlefxreal collisions, impact bursts
Sampled audioscore + layered SFX, .ogg

Text in, engine out

Defold projects are entirely plain text — Lua scripts, text scene files, INI config — bundled headlessly by the platform with no editor and no license. The same property that makes Godot AI-authorable, at a fraction of the payload.

lamplighter/
├ game.project · INI
├ main/main.collection · text scene
├ main/hero.script · Lua, message-passing
├ atlases/hero.atlas · text
bob.jar --platform wasm-web → 2.7MB

How a piece gets made

01

Concept pack

Sheets + element inventory — the shared standard.

02

Blockout + feel

Gray boxes playing; feel tuned before art.

03

Blender art → atlases

Mocap sprite frames packed into engine atlases.

04

Headless bundle

Single-arch wasm, ~3MB total, no special headers.

05

Speed gate

Fast-3G load measured: ≤3s to playing, or no ship.

Pieces

Each card is a piece produced by the loop above — newest first.

The first pieces are in the pipeline

The lab launched with the platform Defold tier — its first games are being concepted, built and speed-audited right now.

Questions, answered

Why does loading speed matter this much?

On mobile web, abandonment climbs steeply with every second before gameplay. Portal studios build on Defold precisely because a ~3MB bundle starts in seconds on cellular — this lab enforces that as a measured gate, not a hope.

What’s the trade-off versus Godot?

Godot carries more built-in features (notably dynamic 2D lighting) at a much heavier web payload; Defold trades some of that for a dramatically smaller, faster bundle. The platform offers both — the game’s needs decide.

Is the speed number real?

Yes — every cycle load-tests the piece on a simulated Fast-3G connection with the browser’s network throttling, and the measured time to first playable frame is recorded in the lab ledger.

Can I build a Defold game myself?

The Defold tier in the AI Game Builder runs this pipeline — describe a 2D game where fast mobile-web loading matters and the builder ships it on Defold.

Build a game that loads before they lose interest

Describe it. The builder ships it tiny, fast and verified.

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