Heathen Engineering

Getting Started

Welcome to the Heathen Knowledge Base #

Heathen Engineering builds tools for game developers, across Unity, Unreal, Godot, and O3DE. Our tools have shipped in 250+ commercial games on Steam, some of them high-profile titles, and we’ve been developing and supporting them for over a decade. That includes 20+ open-source tools alongside our professional Toolkit line, with our Steamworks integration as the flagship.

This Knowledge Base is where all of it is documented: setup guides, API references, and migration paths, whether you’re picking up your first Heathen tool or moving a project between engines. Our mission is straightforward: help developers find sustainable success at whatever scale they’ve chosen, hobbyist through small studio.

See the games

Defining Your Goals #

Understanding your goals as a developer is the first step toward success. While these categories often overlap, recognising where you are helps you choose the right tools and strategies.

  • Enthusiast: Passionate about tech and learning more.
  • Hobbyist: Developing for fun, not profit.
  • Amateur: Developing for the love of the craft without the pressure of a full-time job.
  • Professional: Developing as a business and earning a living from the industry.

If you are serious about turning game development into a business, you must ground your expectations in reality. The idea of building a professional game with zero resources or zero budget is a myth. Every game has expenses, whether in time, tools, or professional services.

Where to find us #

Beyond the docs themselves, here’s where the rest of Heathen lives.

  • Discord: Our main community and support space. Live help, feedback channels, and discussion with other developers.
  • Fluxer: A second community space, same purpose as Discord.
  • FOSS tools: 20+ open-source tools across Unity, Unreal, Godot, and O3DE, all source available.
  • Pro tools: Our Toolkit-tier products: perpetual licenses, full source access, professional support.
  • Made with Heathen: Games shipped using Heathen tools, curated on Steam.

Finding your way around #

Articles are organised by engine first, then by product. Use the engine selector to switch a whole article’s code samples and links between Unity, Unreal, Godot, and O3DE where a tool supports more than one. Each product’s section covers setup, core concepts, and API reference in one place, plus a migration guide where relevant if you’re bringing a project from another engine entirely.

Steamworks is the most complete and most used of our toolkits, and a good starting point if you’re not sure where to look first.

Platforms #

Tools #

General guides #

Already decided, or coming from a specific engine? #

If you already know which engine you’re moving away from, our Migration Guides cover the real, honest concept-mapping and tooling differences: Unity to Godot, Unity to O3DE, and Unity to Unreal Engine.

Planning a commercial release? #

Our Indie Checklist walks through the business, platform, production, and operations sides of shipping a commercial game, four phases, sixteen items, pulled from what we’ve seen work across 250+ shipped titles.

Rate This Article!

Contents