So, since @hillel just created this new Game Development - Flutter Forum category, I thought I’d kick things off by asking about games that have been built (or are being built) in Flutter.
There’s been a bunch of “demo” games since at least 2018, of course. (The guys at Rive and I worked on the first Google I/O Flutter game that year, if I remember correctly. It was an in-person multiplayer that up to 4 people played at the Flutter booth. I can’t remember the name, though.)
Then flutter.dev/games has a Case studies section with a bunch more modern examples. I think 4 Pics 1 Word is quite successful. Wallace & Gromit sounds fun (especially since it’s one of my favorite animated film franchises).
I’m looking to learn what other people are building — or have built. It doesn’t matter how “big” or “small” it is. Game jam entries are as valid as million dollar franchises.
Oh, and you don’t need to post only your own game. If you find something interesting, and you know it’s Flutter, post it.
UPDATE: I neglected to check whether there’s already a similar thread before posting this one. And of course there is! So please regard this one as “what games have been written in Flutter”, while the other thread is about games being written in Flutter right now.
I’m pursuing a project now with the time I can squeeze in, but right now it’s essentially a pile of engine code with a proof-of-concept Flutter UI slapped on top. I’m trying to adapt some ideas from tabletop RPGs to a digital, single-player experience, inspired by a jam project last summer. Anyway, I’m at least two months from anything like an alpha build, but I wanted to share that, more than Flutter, I was attracted by programming in Dart. It’s such a pleasant language to work with.
My other recent gamedev work has been in Godot Engine, which I have used to ship a few educational games. GDScript is really good for what it is, but it’s not a great language for serious engineering: the refactoring support just isn’t there, for example. I wish I had something in between, with Dart’s robust language features but also the ease of slapping together, say, a tween or an animation in Godot Engine.
I messed up and didn’t check whether there’s already a similar thread before posting this one. And of course there is. You might want to move your post over there.
Ain’t that the truth. I periodically have to be reminded that some of the things I take for granted in Dart just aren’t there in other languages. And I don’t mean features so much as stuff like consistency.
Your note about “something in between” is, imho, a good topic for a whole separate thread! How can we make Dart a better programming language for games? (And I don’t mean the semantics and syntax of the language, necessarily, but the ecosystem and the available libraries.)
Funny enough, I did see the other thread around the same time, but that one was encouraging screenshots, and mine are still rather embarrassing. Once I get more of my engine working, I want to invest time in the player experience. Then, I hope to have more concrete thoughts comparing this with my Godot Engine experience.
I have an idea for a game, I really want to use Flutter. I don’t really plan to have animations, it’s more like a thinking/guessing game.
I have already built the combat logic in dart as a text based simulation, it seems fun to me.
But I’m still a beginner, especially in the UI stuff. I don’t want to use material or cupertino and I’m not sure where to begin without those and have something that still looks right on desktop too. If I will have graphics it will be 2d, probably lines…
The UI in yours looks like an actual game, how hard it was to do it?
Do you have any advice for UI, that doesn’t feel like just another mobile app?
Go ahead with Material, it’s a good start and does a lot more for you than “just” the design language. My game also uses Material (although you’d be hard pressed to find a typical Material widget anywhere, except for MaterialApp.
I say, don’t worry about the UI at first. If it’s fun in text mode, you probably have something there. Start by implementing stuff in basic UI, dealing with layout issues first. In Flutter, it’s super easy to later start using your own custom widgets (e.g. I have a “BigButton” that I’m using in place of something like Material’s “FlatButton”).
Don’t worry if the game doesn’t at first even look like a game. Here’s what Slay the Spire looked like at first:
@filip I remember watching a YouTube video about Knights of San Francisco a while back; pretty sure that was why I’m subscribed to the channel!
My first—and only—Flutter project in the app stores is a game I published a year ago. (Will hopefully have another app out there within a few months!)
As I was getting into UI development, I was surprised at how much of what I learned in elementary school art class was blatant misinformation. Eventually I made an educational game and put it up over at hue-man.app.
Just last week I played it for a bit while waiting at the doctor’s office—it’s definitely not perfect and may never “take off”, but overall I’m very pleased with how it turned out.
EDIT: I’m 3 minutes in and I’m already loving this. This is like a really nice educational interactive learning guide. TBH, I think you’re underselling it with the choice of typography and style in the trailer (though I totally understand the choice from the thematic perspective).
Nice work on HueMan. Thanks for releasing the source code. I learned a few new things by browsing through, such as extension types, which I had not encountered before. Also, hueQueue is one of the best variable names I’ve seen in a while. It has a lovely shape.
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