Perspectives from Early Adopters of Flutter as a Game Development Tool
Article Summary
Google's Flutter team studied early adopters building games with Flutter and discovered something surprising: 62% of Flutter developers didn't even know they could use it for game development.
Before launching the Flutter Casual Game Toolkit at Google I/O 2022, the Flutter team conducted user research with 6 game developers plus a broader community survey. They wanted to understand what developers need to succeed with Flutter for games and whether it's a viable alternative to Unity and Unreal.
Key Takeaways
- Two developer types emerged: app-game hybrid builders and computational artists
- Developers praised Flutter's simplicity over Unity for 2D casual games
- 39% of surveyed developers interested in learning Flutter game development
- Success story: Kelimelik reached 5M installs with 4.5 stars on Google Play
- Top pain points: Play Services integration, Flame docs, and performance on low-end devices
Flutter shows strong potential for 2D casual games targeting indie developers, but needs better documentation, sample games, and curated resources to unlock broader adoption.
About This Article
Flutter game developers faced real obstacles when building games. They couldn't easily integrate Play Game Services, lacked offline-first databases that handled conflicts well, and had trouble debugging GPU issues compared to what Xcode offered with OpenGL tools.
Tao Dong's research team identified three areas worth investing in long-term: better shader usability, smaller web bundles for platforms like Facebook Instant Games, and support for Windows and Steam. Meanwhile, community members started organizing game-related issues under the 'a: gamedev' GitHub label to keep track of what needed fixing.
At Google I/O 2022, the Flutter team released the Casual Game Toolkit with sample games, documentation, and how-to videos. This directly addressed feedback from 31 survey respondents who said they needed better tutorials and documentation before they could start building games.
