Game developers should take a look at the brand new Godot Engine 4.6 release, bringing a big refresh to the popular cross-platform open source game engine.
It looks a bit different now too, thanks to the inclusion of a new more modern theme by default but the classic theme is still around for those that want it. Jolt Physics is also now included by default, even more of the UI can be moved around and docked, Screen Space Reflection (SSR) got a big overhaul and more.
Pictured – Godot 4.6 on my Fedora KDE desktop
A truly massive addition with this release is the brand new LibGodot, a library that developers can use to embed the engine directly into their applications. Allowing full control of everything and it supports Linux, macOS and Windows.
Plenty of UI enhancements made it into this release too including the ability to switch tabs while dragging and dropping,you can add entirely new keyboard shortcuts to open up more customization for your workflow which they say also lets “plugins expose their own commands that feel like native editor actions”, there’s live previews in the Quick Open dialog when going through the list to pick things like textures and materials, enhancements to the animation editor to allow things like resizing animation length directly in the timeline and the list just keeps on going for a while.
A new foundation has arrived to support advanced controller features like adjusting LED light colours, and dealing with the likes of motion sensors, touchpads, haptic feedback, adaptive triggers and so on as well which sounds fun.
OpenXR support saw numerous improvements for AR / VR too including native OpenXR 1.1 support, with a compatibility layer to fall back to OpenXR 1.0. Plus the ability to use the Godot XR Editor with Android XR devices.
They also say that Direct3D 12 support should now be on-par with Vulkan, and is the new default on Windows.
There’s absolutely loads more. Amazing to see such progress on free and open source software, as a great alternative to the likes of Unity and Unreal giving developers more control and no license fees.
“Almost 3 years after the 4.0 release, Godot 4 is starting to be a mature engine, including a wide array of features that enable countless developers to publish games in all genres. For example, Steam got over 1,200 new Godot games in 2025, while itch.io consistently gets around 500 new Godot games per week (game jams, prototypes, etc.).
While every Godot user still has their own favorite missing feature which they’re eagerly awaiting, for the most part the engine is fully capable. But there are still so many minor roadblocks, papercuts, workflow issues or outright bugs which can make the experience of developing and publishing games more painful than we’d like.
So for this release, there was a significant focus on polish and usability, aiming to firmly establish Godot as an engine that you can rely upon, while keeping the iteration speed, lightweightness, and flexibility which make users love it.
Close to 400 contributors were involved in this new feature release, authoring 2,001 (!) commits, and we want to thank them all for their amazing contributions, as well as all users who sponsor the Development Fund, reported bugs, opened proposals, or supported each other on our community platforms.” – Rémi Verschelde, Project Maintainer
Check out the release page for more info.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
