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In Godot, a scene is a file representing a blueprint for a self-contained part of a game, such as a character, a pickup, an enemy, or a level. It can be anything. A scene file is a template that can be instantiated to create a tree of nodes.

A scene is composed of one or more nodes and resources such as images, sounds, or other data. We typically build scenes in the Godot editor, which gives us a visual interface for creating and editing scenes. Then, we save them as files with the .tscn extension.

When Godot runs, it reads our scene files, which contain a description of nodes and resources, and recreates the corresponding node tree. Transforming a scene file into nodes is called instantiation.

For example, the following code creates a new instance of a pickup scene, which produces a new node hierarchy (a copy of the pickup scene template). Then, we add the created node hierarchy as a child of the current node, which is a common way to add new nodes to the scene tree in Godot:

const PickupScene = preload("pickup.tscn")

func _ready() -> void:
    var pickup = PickupScene.instantiate()
    add_child(pickup)

Scenes can contain instances of other scenes, which allows for creating complex structures by composing scenes. This promotes composition and allows us to reuse parts of our game across different scenes.