Final Update

Well, I wasn't expecting Godot to be as difficult as it turned out to be, and that's the short of it.

I feel Godot can be a very useful development tool for people who know how to use it. It's fast and lightweight, with incredibly comprehensive documentation and a multitude of handy functions that make development easier, like a built-in pause function to pause a game and the built-in script editor. It's native language, GodotScript, will also be familiar to anyone who has worked with Python.

But the road to that knowledge is rocky, and I feel the engine cannot be used to even a fair degree unless you are already proficient with it. Much like Linux, every aspect about the engine must be fine-tuned beforehand -- file and folder names changed midway through or imported incorrectly, for example, will not cause any issues during development until after a build has been exported and you're looking at the crash report for "missing" files. For each nifty trick it has, it is also missing simple functionality like popular keybinds and pre-loaded export tools.

I spent three times longer setting up drivers, configuring the editor, and fixing editor errors than I did coding and bugfixing the actual game. I still don't understand some of the finer points of the engine, and the prototype is somewhat buggy as a result of that. Collision detection between the player and enemies, namely jumping and dying when walked into, is hit-or-miss. Sometimes it will work flawlessly, other times it doesn't work at all. It's a weird situation all around.

That said, it was nevertheless an interesting learning experience. Godot is something I could learn to work with, given more time.