What advantage do you think defold has over godot for 2d (apart from currently seemingly being more polished)? Theres lots of people complaining in this thread that GDscript is not serious enough as an engine language, but Godot at least has a decent c++ api. Defold only seems to support Lua (although you can extend the engine with other languages afaik).
Bluntly, getting too hung up on languages is procrastination. Lua is more than fine. (GDScript isn't actually that bad, just completely esoteric). Similarly I wouldn't get hung up on Blueprints or C++ when worrying about Unreal, partly because their C++ is so particular it's extreme.
Defold is basically a pile of interesting simple subsystems, especially around game logic, that in combination become surprisingly powerful, and the experience of the devs shows. It is one of those tools that even if you never use it again some of the ideas stay with you.
I actually agree with you about the language-stuff. I thought your parent-command was essentially making some kind of performance-based comparison between defold and godot, which is why I mentioned Lua.
Defold seems interesting, but unlike Heaps and Godot it hasn't yet been used for any game I've heard of.
(additionaly I don't really agree that Gdscript is particullary esoteric. It's basically python, with a bunch of very obvious engine-api stuff added on top. Language-wise theres very little to learn there, which is great)
> Defold seems interesting, but unlike Heaps and Godot it hasn't yet been used for any game I've heard of
Is this true really? It appears to have been bought by King (Candy Crush Saga) and used internally (see the Defold about page). So while it may be associated with mobile/casual gaming it was worthy of being purchased and used by an otherwise successful company -- at least along some metrics.
Acquiring anything usually has a period of investigation and inquiry which Defold passed.
Seems at least worthy of consideration next to Heaps and Godot.