🌟 You make games, the template handles the boring stuff.

Godot Game Template, also GGT in short, is a simple generic starter project for Godot games.

Provides a solid base for quick iterations.

It worked well when used by small teams in game jams, but it should be generic enough to work for mid sized teams as well.

Used by

Logo	Godot	Title	Platforms
	3.4	YouAreUto (2019)	Android, iOS, GitHub
	3.2.3	Defending Todot (2020)	HTML5, GitHub
	3.x	Karooto No Gase (2021)	Android, HTML5 Itch.io
	4.3	Pizza Poison (2025)	Itch.io
	4.4.1	Pangolick Quest (2025)	HTML5, Windows, Linux, OSX Itch.io

Features Overview

GGT is composed of multiple parts:

1. ggt-core addon
2. ggt-shortcuts addon
3. Godot project boilerplate (this repository)

ggt-core provides:

• Scene management with transitions and optional progress bar
• Parameter passing between scenes
• Multithreaded scene loading
  • single threaded loading fallback for web exports

ggt-shortcuts provides:

• Debug shortcuts mapped to keyboard keys for restart (R), pause frame (P), advance frame (.), speed up time scale (SHIFT), quit (Q)
  • easily configurable via Godot Input Map
• Automatic shortcuts removal for release builds

The godot project boilerplate provides:

• GitHub Actions workflows for automatic builds+web deploy on Github Pages after each commit (thanks to aBARICHELLO/godot-ci)
  • or you can use manual workflow dispatch
  • or you can use a local release.sh script to export multiple targets (Windows, Linux, Mac, ...) with a single command
  • or you can export manually from Godot as usual
• A project structure that follows Godot best practices and naming conventions
• Placeholder menu and gameplay scenes with support for keyboard, gamepad or touch inputs
• A preconfigured a global theme for control nodes. Tweak resources/theme/theme-main.tres and every control nodes will inherit from it

Get started

You have 2 options:

1. Get started with Github Templates:

1. Create a new repo using this template
2. Clone the new repository locally
3. Open the project in Godot (GDScript)

2. Get started with a local project:

1. Go to https://github.com/crystal-bit/godot-game-template/releases
2. Download Source code (zip)
3. Unzip the project
4. Open the project in Godot Engine (GDScript) and create your game!

How to...

Change scene

GGT.change_scene("res://scenes/gameplay/gameplay.tscn")

Change scene and show progress bar

GGT.change_scene("res://scenes/gameplay/gameplay.tscn", {
  "show_progress_bar": true
})

Change scene and pass parameters

var params = {
  "level": 4,
  "skin": "dark"
}
GGT.change_scene("res://scenes/gameplay/gameplay.tscn", params)

Nodes in the loaded scene can read params with:

# gameplay.gd

func _ready():
    var params = GGT.get_current_scene_data().params
    print(params.level) # 4
    print(params.skin)  # 'dark'
   # setup your scene here

Await scene transition to finish

Note: all the tree is already paused during scene transitions, but if you need to wait for the graphic transition to completely disappear before calling some code you can use this approach:

# gameplay.gd

func _ready() -> void:
    if GGT.is_changing_scene(): # this will be false for the starting scene or if you start the scene with "Run current scene" or F6 shortcut during development
        await GGT.scene_transition_finished
    # activate your game logic here
    pass

Restart the current scene

GGT.restart_scene() # old params will be reused

Restart the current scene and override params

var new_params = {
  "level": 5,
}
GGT.restart_scene_with_params(new_params)

addons/ggt-debug-shortcuts

addons/ggt-debug-shortcuts is enabled by default and it builds on top of ggt-core.

By default it will set these input actions to the project:

You can change, remove or add shortcuts in debug_shortcuts.gd.

These shortcuts work in the editor and in debug builds and are automatically removed on release builds.

Conventions and project structure

• assets/
  • Contains textures, sprites, sounds, music, fonts, ...
• builds/
  • output directory for game builds generated via release.sh (ignored by .gitignore and .gdignore)
• scenes/
  • Contains Godot scenes (both entities, reusable scenes and "game screen" scenes)
  • Scene folders can contain .gd scripts or resources used by the scene

Mostly inspired by the official Godot Engine guidelines:

• snake_case for files and folders (eg: game.gd, game.tscn)
• PascalCase for node names (eg: Game, Player)

Lower Case file names

This convention avoids having filesystem issues on different platforms. Stick with it and it will save you time. Read more here:

Windows and recent macOS versions use case-insensitive filesystems by default, whereas Linux distributions use a case-sensitive filesystem by default. This can cause issues after exporting a project, since Godot's PCK virtual filesystem is case-sensitive. To avoid this, it's recommended to stick to snake_case naming for all files in the project (and lowercase characters in general).

See also this PR that adds is_case_sensitive().

Trim whitespaces on save

If every developer on the team is using the built-in Godot Engine text editor I strongly suggest to activate this option:

• Editor -> Editor Settings -> Text Editor/Behaviour -> Trim Trailing Whitespace on Save

It avoids whitespace changes that may add noise in team work.

Export utilities

release.sh

From your project root:

./release.sh # this assumes that you have a "godot" binary/alias in your $PATH

Look inside the ./builds/ directory:

builds
└── ProjectName
    ├── html5
    │   ├── build.log # an export log + build datetime and git hash
    │   ├── index.html
    │   ├── ...
    ├── linux
    │   ├── ProjectName.x86_64
    │   └── build.log
    ├── osx
    │   ├── ProjectName.dmg
    │   └── build.log
    └── windows
        ├── ProjectName.exe
        └── build.log

Github Actions

If you are using Github you can take advantage of:

1. automatic exports for every commit push (see push-export.yml)
2. manual exports via Github CI (see dispatch-export.yml )

You can read more on Wiki - Continuos Integration

Contributing

If you want to help the project, create games and feel free to get in touch and report any issue.

You can also join the Discord server (#godot-game-template channel).

Before adding new features please open an issue to discuss it with other contributors.

Contributors

Many features were implemented only thanks to the help of:

• Andrea-Miele
• Fahien
• Andrea1141
• vini-guerrero
• idbrii
• jrassa

Also many tools were already available in the open source community, see the Thanks section.

Thanks

• For support & inspiration:
  • All the contributors
  • Crystal Bit community
  • GameLoop.it
  • Godot Engine Italia
  • Godot Engine
• For their work on free and open source software:
  • aBARICHELLO
  • croconut
  • josephbmanley
  • GDQuest
  • Scony
  • myood