Recs.
Updated
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Permissive runtime license agreement
With the Developer edition of the product, there are absolutely no limits or requirements when selling your creations. You are free to make as much money as you want (this applies to the Standard edition too), and you don't have to include any logos or credits in your creations.
Pro Export native runtime for all platforms
Be it Windows EXE, Android APK, iOS, HTML5 and Flash SWF, Fusion 2.5 is able to export your game to fast, truly native runtime for specified platform with a click.
Pro Intuitive drag & drop interface & visual event editor
CF2.5 uses a straightforward drag & drop editor that allows for easy level, animation and event creation without having to write a single line of code.
Pro Community-driven extensive object repository
Click Fusion has a great selection of extensions submitted by the community.
The extensions cover a variety of game-building tasks including parsing of strings using up to two alternating delimiters using the "Tokenizer Object", generating random numbers without reusing them from multiple lists which can be refilled and distinctively replenished with the "Random Multipool Object" among others.
Pro A great unofficial community for Spanish-speaking users
A great community in Spanish where you will receive all the help you need to solve your doubts and problems. You'll also find all kinds of resources and materials in Spanish.
Una gran comunidad en español en donde recibirás toda la ayuda que necesites para solucionar tus dudas y problemas. También encontrarás todo tipo de recursos, tutoriales y ejemplos en español.
Pro Balanced feature set
An excellent compromise between ease of use, power, flexibility and ability to export to different platforms. Easy to learn for beginners with the ability to make complex things, of course, at the expense of a larger effort. Good rapid application development tool for making 2D games.
Pro Supportive, passionate community
Any time you have a question or a problem, the community and the software developers are there to help you out either on forums or steam. The devs repond quickly to private messages or instantly on ClickConverse (chat). Additionally, many users have support sites with open source examples and tutorials.
Pro Great IRL user events
Clickteam holds user conventions for customers to come along, meet the staff and hang out with people who they've met online. This furthers the community spirit which is so prevalent around Clickteam's products and it's a fantastic weekend.
Pro It is very powerful for making 2D games, yet requires no traditional programming experience and very little to no higher math
There is no 'easy button' program that will make a good game for you with no hard work, and this software is no exception to that, but it does make the process easier. With the option of coding in either a spreadsheet style editor or a list style editor, the event based programming language reads more like English than traditional programming languages. This has made it ideal for me as I have a very hard time understanding traditional programming. I would say this is the perfect solution for people that want to make 2D games but who don't have a very mathematically oriented mind, and think more visually. Just like anything it can take some getting used to, but after following some tutorials and tinkering with it, you'll be able to create practically any kind of 2D game with it so long as you have the determination.
Pro Great formula editor, which allows you to create complex maths and events with ease
Pro Stable
Have used fusion 2.5 through all of its iterations, even when it was owned by imsi as CNC ( click n create ) it has been very stable and projects have been known to run on almost any Windows based computer. The projects you create even run on future versions of Windows with never many issues.
Cons
Con Some features are really outdated and major updates are few and rare
There are some features that could make the software a lot more powerful but Clickteam does not have the staff resources to handle updating the software to be competitive with similar software.
Con Its Event Editor can be cumbersome if you are working on complex projects
While Fusion's visual programming event system is great to simplify things, it can be much more cumbersome to work with it than reading lines of code when you are working on a complex project. Especially if your events involve many nested conditions and lots of objects on the frame.
You are able to group events and objects, but it doesn't help at all if there's lots of conditions on an event and it becomes pretty hard to read.
Con Many event 'gotchas', especially with object selection
Many events have very unpredictable selection behavior, e.g. the 'Create' action (where the selection depends on whether a selection list already exists).
There is also a lot of subtle selection behavior, e.g. implicit object pairs for actions when an object is used in an expression.
Con Need to write C++ extensions when existing extensions don't cut it
If you need e.g. a Steamworks extension or 3D display extension, you need to move out from the event system and create extensions in C++ with a cumbersome API. Fusion does not have FFI calls like other programming languages.
Con Cannot script editor
You cannot script the IDE or editor with e.g. macros or custom functionality, like you can in other popular game engines.
Con Lack of native network multiplayer system, built-in database support, social media support
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Con Need to copy & paste events into every frame
Events are not shared globally across multiple frames. In order to have the player going from one frame to the other, you need to copy and paste all the code from one frame to the other.
This is obviously very tedious and time consuming.
Out of Date Pros + Cons
Con Windows-Only development
Only Windows machines can be used to develop with.