5 Ebitengine Problems I Solved Making My First Game (2025)

Choosing a game engine for your first project is a rite of passage. In 2025, the options are endless, but I was drawn to Ebitengine for its promise of simplicity and the power of Go. As a Go developer, the idea of building a game in my favorite language was irresistible. Ebitengine (formerly Ebiten) is a fantastic open-source 2D game engine, but like any tool, it has its learning curve. My first game, a simple space shooter, was a journey of discovery filled with head-scratching moments and eventual triumphs.

In this post, I'll share five specific problems I encountered and the solutions I implemented. If you're starting with Ebitengine, my hope is that these hard-won lessons will save you time and frustration, letting you focus on the fun part: making your game.

1. Managing Game State Effectively

The Challenge: A Tangled Update Loop

My game needed a main menu, a gameplay screen, and a game-over screen. My first instinct was to manage this with a simple string variable (`var gameState string`) and a giant `switch` statement inside the main `Update` function. It looked something like this:

func (g *Game) Update() error {
    switch g.gameState {
    case "menu":
        // handle menu logic
    case "play":
        // handle gameplay logic
    case "gameover":
        // handle game over logic
    }
    return nil
}

This worked for about five minutes. Soon, the `Update` and `Draw` functions became monstrous, tangled webs of `if` and `switch` statements. Passing data between states was a nightmare, and the code was impossible to maintain.

The Solution: A State Machine

The classic solution to this problem is a State Machine. I refactored my code by defining a `Scene` interface. Any part of my game that could be considered a "state" (like the menu or a level) would implement this interface.

type Scene interface {
    Update(stateManager *StateManager) error
    Draw(screen *ebiten.Image)
}

type StateManager struct {
    currentScene Scene
}

func (sm *StateManager) GoTo(scene Scene) {
    sm.currentScene = scene
}

func (g *Game) Update() error {
    if g.stateManager.currentScene != nil {
        return g.stateManager.currentScene.Update(g.stateManager)
    }
    return nil
}

Now, my main `Game` struct just holds a `StateManager`. The `StateManager` holds the `currentScene`. The main `Update` loop simply calls `Update()` on whatever the current scene is. To change from the menu to the game, the `MenuScene`'s `Update` function would simply call `stateManager.GoTo(&PlayScene{})`. This approach dramatically cleaned up my code, making each state self-contained and reusable.

2. Handling Input for Different Game States

The Challenge: Context Hell

Closely related to state management is input handling. In the menu, I needed to detect mouse clicks on buttons. In the game, I needed to check for WASD key presses for movement and the spacebar for shooting. My initial tangled `switch` statement led to input logic like `if gameState == "play" && inpututil.IsKeyJustPressed(ebiten.KeySpace)`. This was brittle and mixed concerns horribly.

The Solution: State-Specific Input Handlers

The State Machine pattern provided the perfect solution here as well. Since each `Scene` has its own `Update` method, it can also have its own input handling logic. The input code for the menu now lives entirely within `MenuScene.Update()`, and the gameplay input lives within `PlayScene.Update()`. There's no longer a need for global checks. The context is implicit in the state itself.

This keeps the logic clean and ensures that pressing the spacebar on the main menu does nothing, without needing an explicit check to prevent it.

3. Efficient Asset Loading and Management

The Challenge: On-Demand Lag

My first attempt at loading images was naive. Whenever I needed to draw a player or an enemy, I'd load the image file from disk right there in the `Draw` call. This resulted in noticeable stuttering and lag, especially when new enemies appeared on screen. Disk I/O is slow, and doing it in the middle of a game loop is a performance killer.

The Solution: A Centralized Asset Loader

The professional approach is to load all necessary assets into memory when the game or level starts. I created an `AssetManager` struct responsible for this. At startup, it loads all images and sounds, storing them in maps with string keys.

type AssetManager struct {
    images map[string]*ebiten.Image
    sounds map[string]*audio.Player
}

func NewAssetManager() *AssetManager {
    // Load all assets from disk here
    // ...
    return &AssetManager{images: loadedImages, sounds: loadedSounds}
}

func (am *AssetManager) GetImage(name string) *ebiten.Image {
    return am.images[name]
}

My game creates one instance of this manager and passes it to any state or object that needs to draw something. Instead of loading from disk, an object simply calls `assetManager.GetImage("player_ship")`, which is a fast map lookup.

4. Achieving Smooth, Frame-Rate Independent Movement

The Challenge: Jerky and Inconsistent Speed

"I'll just move the player 5 pixels every frame." This is a classic beginner mistake. I wrote `player.X += 5` in my `Update` loop and it looked fine on my machine. But when I ran it on a slower laptop, the player moved in slow motion. On a high-refresh-rate gaming monitor, the player would have moved at lightning speed. The game's speed was tied directly to the frame rate (FPS).

The Solution: Embracing Delta Time

Movement must be based on time, not frames. The solution is to use "delta time" – the amount of time that has passed since the last frame. Ebitengine makes this easy. The engine aims to run `Update` at a fixed rate, called Ticks per Second (TPS), which defaults to 60. You can get this value with `ebiten.TPS()`.

The correct way to implement movement is:

const playerSpeed = 300 // pixels per second

func (p *Player) Update() {
    // Delta time is the fraction of a second that has passed since the last update.
    // If TPS is 60, dt is 1/60.
    dt := 1.0 / float64(ebiten.TPS())

    if ebiten.IsKeyPressed(ebiten.KeyD) {
        p.X += playerSpeed * dt
    }
    // ... other movement keys
}

By multiplying our desired speed (in pixels per second) by the delta time, the player now moves the correct distance over time, regardless of whether the game is running at 30, 60, or 144 FPS. This results in smooth, predictable movement across all hardware.

5. Deploying the Game for Windows, macOS, and Web

The Challenge: It's Not Just `go build`

One of Go's killer features is its cross-compiler. I assumed I could just run `GOOS=windows go build` and be done. While this is partially true, Ebitengine has specific requirements for different platforms, especially for web (WASM) and macOS.

The Solution: Platform-Specific Build Commands

After some digging in the documentation and community forums, I found the right recipes for deployment:

• Windows: This is the easiest. A simple `go build .` in your project directory is usually all you need. It produces a standalone `.exe` file.
• macOS: macOS requires Cgo to link against its native graphics and audio libraries. The command is `CGO_ENABLED=1 go build .`. For distribution, you'll also need to bundle the executable into a `.app` directory and deal with code signing, which is a topic unto itself.
• Web (WebAssembly/WASM): This is where Ebitengine truly shines, but the build command is specific: `GOOS=js GOARCH=wasm go build -o main.wasm .`. This creates a `main.wasm` file. You'll also need a simple `index.html` and a small JavaScript file (`wasm_exec.js`, provided by the Go installation) to load and run the WebAssembly module in a browser. A key consideration for WASM is that you cannot have blocking operations or infinite loops, but Ebitengine's main loop structure handles this for you perfectly.

Creating a simple `Makefile` or build script to store these commands saved me a lot of time and made deploying new versions for testing a one-command process.

Conclusion: Ebitengine is Worth the Climb

Building my first game with Ebitengine was an incredibly rewarding experience. While I hit these five major roadblocks, overcoming them taught me fundamental principles of game architecture that apply far beyond Ebitengine itself. The engine's simplicity is its greatest strength, but it requires you to bring (or learn) good software design patterns to the table.

If you're a Go developer looking to get into game development, I can't recommend Ebitengine enough. The community is helpful, the documentation is solid, and the joy of seeing your Go code come to life as an interactive, cross-platform game is unmatched. Don't be discouraged by the initial hurdles; they are the building blocks of becoming a better game developer.