One of the iPad’s biggest strengths is its robust software library. However, one category that’s never been very well served (due to Apple policies mostly) is software development tools. Outside of Apple’s own Swift Playground app, the options for dev tools on iPad is pretty limited. The release of Xogot for iPad may change that for game developers.
Xogot brings a full-featured game development environment to iPadOS. Xamarin co-founder Miguel de Icaza and his company Xibbon Inc, have been working for a number of years to bring the free and open source Godot game engine to iPad, Originally released in 2014, the Godot engine saw a bump in noteriety in 2023 when Unity briefly changed its licensing fee structure, and developers were looking for alternatives.
Xogot implements a native Swift interface on top of the Godot engine, built using SwiftUI. But the developers went beyond just rebuilding the Godot editor UI natively and calling it a day. They actually took the time to implement a user interface that embraces iPadOS conventions.
The app can be entirely driven by touch, if you wish (although you’ll really want a hardware keyboard). There are editors for both 2D and 3D scenes that can be used with touch or keyboard/mouse.
Xogot supports iPadOS multitasking, including Stage Manager, which enables you to meaningfully work with the app on an external display. The app supports multiple forms of input with both external keyboard and Apple Pencil support, For play-testing, Xogot supports Bluetooth controllers, keyboards, and trackpads. Builds of your game can get exported and shared over the web via WebAssembly export.
Also….it has an actual debugger! My single biggest request for Swift Playground is an interactive debugger, and this app just has it. In the small amount of time I’ve spent with Xogot, it feels like everything I’ve wanted Swift Playground to be for the past three years. I’m unfortunately not a game developer, but I could see myself actually writing meaningful amounts of code in an interface like this.
There are, of course, some limitations due to Apple policies. The only scripting language available in Xogot is GDScript, and there is no support for native GDExtensions.
The app comes bundled with version 4.4 of the Godot engine. The developers have also ensured compatibility with the desktop/laptop Godot editor so that you can work on the same project across your iPad and your traditional PC and go back and forth.
Xogot is free to download from the App Store and requires a one-time purchase to use the editor. That purchase gets you a year of future updates, and you can decide if you want to continue using the app after that time. Xogot requires an iPad with an A12 Bionic chip or newer.
P.S. – If you’re a developer and have some free time, Miguel gave a great presentation that’s on YouTube about bringing Godot to iPadOS. He goes over both the technical and user interface decisions that made the project possible.
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