single

Godot 2D Secrets (early access)

An extensive intermediate-level course to create professional 2D games with Godot. Learn a breadth of techniques and the best practices to develop your own games.
$60
☆☆☆☆☆
 ( 3 )

Level Up your Game Creation Skills

This intermediate-level course is here to help you take your 2D game creation skills to the next level.

There are plenty of free tutorials available to learn Godot's basics.

But for the most part, they only teach one feature, in isolation. And when you sit down to make a complete game, you get stuck.

As your projects grow, bugs appear more frequently, and your progress slows down...

It doesn't have to be this way!

Professional programmers use particular code structures to stay productive year-long.

Learn the techniques the pros use

In 2D Secrets, you will learn: 

  • Efficient solutions to implement common game mechanics.
  • A breadth of professional programming techniques to reuse across your game projects.
  • The best practices when making 2D games with Godot.

All that using Godot's GDScript programming language.

Because you learn the most by doing, the course is entirely project-based. We're working on many different types of games to keep every new chapter fresh and engaging.

Also, videos aren't great to study code. In video, thirty lines of GDScript easily become a 10-minute monologue. That just slows you down.

That's why we decided to create a text-based course.

Early Access

Godot 2D Secrets is currently available in early access.

Buy the course now at a lower price and get a free batch of new tutorials once at the end of every month, until the final release.

Once you bought the course, you get lifetime free updates. All future updates will come at no extra cost.

The course is also available in the Godot Secrets combo bundle with VFX Secrets, Shader Secrets, and PCG Secrets. Or in the Ultimate Godot bundle that contains all our current and future courses.

To get an email when it comes out, you can subscribe to the GDQuest newsletter.

We already have exciting topics planned for the next updates:

  • Simulation and builder game inspired by Factorio.
  • Rhythm games.
  • Real-time strategy combat, inspired by Faster Than Light.
  • Visual novels and dialogues.
  • Modular character animation.

Prerequisites

This is an intermediate-level Godot course where we don't hold your hand. It is intended for users who have worked with Godot for a while and want to professionalize themselves.

The content goes straight to the point and focuses on teaching you what matters the most.

While some tutorials are accessible and even beginner-friendly, other projects are complex and require strong programming foundations.

We invite you to check out the free samples in the menu on the right to get a sense of the style and pace.

Note: If you buy it and figure out it's not for you, your purchase comes with a 60 days refund warranty. You just need to contact us to get an instant refund.

Pre-requisites:

  • You should know how to work with Godot’s editor. Things such as adding nodes, resources inside of nodes, and using the Inspector.
  • You should have strong GDScript foundations. We will not cover the basics of the GDScript language in this course. This includes concepts like

If you have no experience with Godot, start with our Free Godot guide learning paths to get up to speed.

Who we are

GDQuest is an international team committed to helping you become a better game developer, all the while contributing to Free and Open-Source Software.

We've been consistently using and supporting Godot for over 4 years now.

I, Nathan, made hundreds of tutorials on our YouTube channel and was hired to work on the official documentation.


Free and Open-Source

The code from this project is available under Free Software licenses. In short, you can use it and modify it freely, even in commercial projects.

By buying this course, you support GDQuest and the creation of Free Software.

Here are the projects we're already developing for Godot 2D Secrets:

Pay with PayPal

If you would like to pay with PayPal, that is possible.

To do so, please:

  1. Create an account
  2. Send me an email at nathan [at] gdquest.com with the following information:
  • The course or list of courses you want to buy
  • Your Mavenseed account's email
  • Your country of residence

I will send you a payment request via PayPal. Once paid, you will get access to the course within two business days.

If you need an invoice, please tell me and send me your full details.

60 days refund warranty

If you don’t like the course or you didn’t learn anything, send us a message within 60 days after your purchase to get an instant refund!

Just send us your purchase receipt and your account’s email to nathan [at] gdquest.com.

Get in touch

If you have questions or need anything, you can:

Sponsors

This course was funded and made possible by hundreds of backers on Kickstarter.

CGCookie

CGCookie has been training Blender artists for over a decade. They provide complete guided learning flows to learn Blender from zero.

Learn More
3 Reviews
  • R
    ☆☆☆☆☆
    Fabian Runn ·

    The simulation course is amazing, if not the best gamedev course I've ever taken. I will be using the source code as a reference for severals systems in the future.

    Well written, well-documented and extremely satisfying flow. If you're a beginner and you want to get some intermediate level knowledge on game development, especially for godot -- do not miss this one out. The others are good too, but especially the simulation course.

    Crank up a chill playlist and code along, I was so into it I didn't realise I did it for six hours straight. Looking forward to the next part.



    • author Nathan Lovato ·

      Thanks much for the kind words! We're taking all the feedback we get on the course, as it's still in early access, and we try to apply it to new series as we make them.

  • ☆☆☆☆☆
    Godot Tutorials ·

    Godot Tutorials is not affiliated with or sponsored by Godot Game Engine.

    The lessons are a work in progress, and to my understanding, more is to come (and so my review may change, most likely for the better).

    My first impression of this product is that it is well presented, straight to the point, and no hand-holding.


    The JRPG section has no videos to accompany it. As a matter of fact there are no videos in this course.

    If videos are your thing, this course will sadly not be for you in terms of your preferred learning style. I personally enjoy books and articles over videos.

    Regardless, you are left to reading the code in the articles, writing the code, and providing your own game assets to make this project your own.


    On top of that, you will be learning the author's way of solving problems, which is excellent, especially if you are new to finding solutions to these problems.


    They introduce topics quickly, such as the Command Pattern, which is a powerful pattern to learn.

    This course does not go into detail of the pattern.

    Keep in mind that this course is called "2D Secrets". This course show's you the author's way of dealing with game design problems. Not "Beginners Guide to Design Patterns" or "Beginners Guide to …" and so the intermediate+ level is at play here.

    There are lots of free materials on Design Patterns, including the Command Pattern and so you should not be hindered by the fact that the lessons don't go into full detail on the Command Pattern.

    A quick read on design patterns should get you up and running on how these lessons get you to use them (in the case of the course, it would be in regards to coding actions).
     
    Overall I would say that this course is great for all levels.


    For the beginner programmers starting out on their journey, this course will show you where you are weak in coding, Godot, and GDScript. It will get you to improve yourself on your shortcomings, so you can become a better programmer. If you are a beginner, there will be shortcomings in this course, a lot. Again no hand holding, you need to know GDScript and Godot at a level of competency.


    For the intermediate programmers, it will push your coding experience to a higher level. This is in terms to reading, understanding, and debugging code in Godot GDScript. 


    This course for advanced programmers shows you specific solutions to game design problems that you can then compare with your own.


    If you are not fully satisfied, this course comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

    Outside of a beginner feeling that they aren't ready for the topics in the course and wanting a refund due to the difficulty (understandable and you shouldn't hesitate to do so), I would guarantee you feel satisfied with what you get based on the price you pay.

    Lastly, the entire project is downloadable. This means it's travel friendly!

    In conclusion, this course can only benefit you positively, so what are you waiting for 😆.

    Best of luck and warm wishes to all who journey into the complex topics of game programming!

    • author Nathan Lovato ·

      Thank you for the detailed review! I personally wouldn't recommend the course to beginners in the sense of people who have little programming experience. Maybe to developers who are getting started with game creation.

      In any case, if someone were to buy the course and realize it's not for them, we have this 30 days refund warranty. Feedback's also always welcome, especially as we're making the course: if any explanation is lacking, we're always happy to answer people's questions and to expand the course.

  • H
    ☆☆☆☆☆
    David Horacek ·

    Pros:

    • Commented code to explain it's purpose
    • Shows quite a lot of game mechanics

    Cons:

    • Messy code

    My Pov:

    Generaly I'd say it's good for those that are looking for designs of certain game mechanics that are covered in here, but already are programmers (might find better sources thought).

    I'd not recommend it as a learning material on Godot as the code is way too messy for it and might teach some bad habbits.

    Gave it a try as the first course on GDQuest and went only half way through and although it's WIP, I assume that the JRPG Core systems part isn't going to change drastically. Probably won't try any other course for reason above.

    • author Nathan Lovato ·

      Thanks for the review.

      Note the course is only in early access
      1, with less than 20% of the content available. It'll get a lot more
      content and, based on our students' feedback, many improvements.


      Could you tell us more about what you consider bad habits, and why (you
      can share detailed feedback in the community tab:
      https://gdquest.mavenseed.com/community  )? How would you code a
      scalable JRPG combat system in
      Godot instead?

      We're
      a team of professional game programmers working on this
      intermediate-level series, and that's the kind of code we would
      recommend to use. The development of our game projects is always public
      (in this case https://github.com/GDQuest/godot-2d-jrpg-combat" target="_blank">https://github.com/GDQuest/godot-2d-jrpg-combat for the RPG) and we do peer review on every project. This includes reviews from the community.

      If
      people can point out poor programming practices in the code,
      things that will cause problems down the line, creating a complete game, I'll gladly update the series or even
      rewrite it. I've done so in the past with our "Make Pro 2D Games with Godot".

      Also note that, as explained on the course's landing page, this is an intermediate to advanced-level game development course:

      "This is an intermediate to advanced level course. To follow it, you should be comfortable reading code.

      While some tutorials are accessible, we cover some complex projects that require good programming foundations."

      Finally, we offer refunds as well! If the course isn't for you, just send me a message and I'll refund your copy.