What is the best alternative to&#x20;BYOND?

Languages:C++, JavaScript

Dev platforms:Windows 7+, macOS 10.11+, Linux, Web

Desktop targets:Windows 7+, macOS 10.11+, Linux

Every property can be animated. See More

691 56

score 1994 · Answer 2

Godot

Top Pro

Integrated animation editor

Top Con

C++ Engine API not very friendly

The base C++ code from Godot is not documented, it's hard to set it up, to compile and hard to extend, it could use better programming standards. See More

Top Pro

Fully dedicated 2D engine, no hacks

Godot has a mature 2D engine with many features used by modern 2D games. See More

Top Con

Annoying minor bugs

Minor bugs can go unaddressed for some time, due to it being a free program. See More

Top Pro

Built-in physics

Add physics to 2D and 3D scenes, through rigid and static bodies, characters, raycasts, vehicles and more. See More

Top Con

Primarily supports own proprietary language (GD Script)

While it's very accessible, and if you know Python you'll pick it up fast, having to learn a new language to fully make use of the platform can be a bit discouraging. And for those learning to code as well as learning Godot for the first time, many would rather learn a language they can 'take with them' when they explore other platforms in the future. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

The executable is portable and less than 40 MB in size. See More

Top Con

No console targets

Given that you can target both desktops and consoles with the same code base in other engines, the lack of support for consoles in Godot is pretty hard to get past if targeting desktops for a game. But asking for an open-source engine to target consoles is probably too much to ask. But it would be interesting to see some legacy consoles targeted even if current ones cannot be. See More

Top Pro

Can be deployed to multiple platforms

Deploy games to desktops (Windows/OS X/Linux), smartphones (iOS/Android/BlackBerry), and the web (HTML5 via Emscripten). See More

Top Con

Difficult to optimize

Godot has an OOP architecture. Everything is an object internally and data is spread among many classes, thus it's difficult to optimize (i.e. not cache friendly, difficuly to vectorize or paralellize, etc). Read about "Data Oriented Design" for more info about the problems and solutions. See More

Top Pro

Under constant development

This engine barely released one year ago has more than 1000 forks on github and about 100 developers. Not only that just a bit of browsing trough issues you will quickly find out the dev community loves new esp free technology and does not shy away from completely rewriting parts of the engine. The audio engine is being completely rewritten to use threads and so forth. See More

Top Con

Strange terminology at its base

Scenes can be made up of other scenes. That makes some sense. But even the smallest object (or prefab or asset) in a scene -- such as that spoon on the table or the marble on the floor -- is still called a scene... except when it's called a node. This is a bit odd for those coming from other engines. With all the great decisions behind the basic design of this engine, the choice of this term from all the potential other terms out there seems really out of place and only serves as a constant reminder that not everything about Godot is great. See More

Top Pro

Unified game editor interface

All the game development work is done inside one program: the engine editor. The scripting is done in the same program. No need for Eclipse or other front-end editors. See More

Top Con

No built-in way to import atlases

Godot does not have an easy and automatic way to import atlases created by other tools. However, there are plugins that can be used to import atlases from other engines. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Godot is licensed under MIT license. Anyone can grab the source from here, and compile the engine themselves. See More

Top Con

2DPhysics is weak compared to Box2d

Box2d has much more features. See More

Top Pro

User friendly UI for all your team

Non-programmers (musicians, artists, etc) can join the development easily. See More

Top Con

NoAdmob or other AdNetwork support

Godot has no native support for implementing advertisements into your game. See More

Top Pro

Editor and runtime are fully cross-platform

You can run Godot on all 3 major operating systems (Windows/Mac/Linux) and build your game to all available platforms from each without any platform-specific work needed. All platforms including Linux are supported first class. See More

Top Con

Many buggy and half-finished features

Top Pro

Instancing and node concept makes sense

The node and the instancing concept work very well and helps developers to structure content efficiently. See More

Top Con

Hard for a Unity user

Coming from a Unity background, Godot engine is hard. See More

Top Pro

The list of supported languages is growing

Officially, Godot supported languages for now will be GDScript, C#(Mono), VisualScript and C++. See More

Top Pro

Fun to use

An important aspect that can't be grasped without using the engine for a few days. The Interface is evolving nicely and making games is just fun. See More

Top Pro

Drag & drop interface

Many parts of the editor allow you to drag & drop, which makes working with assets and scene trees a joy. See More

Top Pro

Internationalization of the editor

You can change the language shown in menus. Godot translations can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn scripting language

Godot has their own scripting language called GDScript. The scripting language is easy to learn with Python-like syntax, but it is not Python. It's very powerful, easy to learn, and it's free of unnecessary things because it was custom built for optimized integration with the Godot Engine. It can be used to add custom behaviors to any object by extending it with scripting, using the built-in editor with syntax highlighting and code completion. A built-in debugger with breakpoints and stepping can be used and graphs for possible bottlenecks can be checked. See More

Top Pro

Really good community

The community is great and really cares about the engine. It is easy to get help and to be part of Godot's future. See More

Top Pro

Creating editor tools is a breeze

Godot Engine is itself a Godot game. By adding the "tool" keyword to the top of a script, you can design extensions for the editor itself INSIDE the editor. Integrating these editor scripts into a bundled plugin for sharing is extremely easy to do. See More

Top Pro

Friendly towards Version Control Systems

The engine is build not only to support version control but to really use it. Scene files for example which usually get compiled into some sort of unreadable data stay in a text format - that way you can actually see your changes in a version control system like Git. See More

Top Pro

Easily expanded scripting system

With 3.0's addition of NativeScript and PluginScript via GDNative, developers can easily define bindings for new scripting languages. In addition to the primarily supported C++, GDScript, VisualScript, and C# languages, the community has contributed D, Nim, and Python as well with more on the way. See More

Top Pro

Built-in documentation linked to the internal ScriptEditor

The editor has a fully searchable index of class API documentation for everything the engine offers (NOT just a web interface). You can easily open the documentation for any class by Ctrl-clicking the class's name in the in-engine text editor for scripts. See More

Top Pro

Incredible documentation after 3.2.2 beta

The documentation used to be weak, but now we have nathen with his help the documentation is the strongest advantage. See More

Top Pro

Scene Based editing

Godot gives you the ability to create scenes to make your life easier, with reusable objects and things you want to incorporate in your games. This makes the game making processvery streamlined and organized. See More

Top Pro

Simple and readable codebase

The engine's source code is easy to read and understand with a self-documenting approach to code design. You don't have to wait months or years for other people to fix an engine bug that is important to your game. Often times, you can spend an hour or two of your own time to fix whatever problems you encounter yourself. See More

Top Pro

Doesn't need to be installed into the system

Godot is very portable, you can download the file from a website then put it on a USB and run it on your other computer without any troublesome errors. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get involved

No need to learn anything with node, you can build a game without typing a line of code + has visual scripting. See More

Top Pro

Engine is yours

There is no royalty and the game you made + engine itself is yours. See More

Top Pro

Can be installed on Steam

You can easily install Godot via the Steam store. See More

Top Pro

Comprehensive tooling

In addition to the scene editor and the script editor (with debugger), the engine also provides a tile map editor, an animation editor (not just for rigs), a performance monitor, a network profiler, and an audio bus console. See More

Top Pro

It has a visual scripting tool

It has a great visual scripting tool. It's a great choice if you don't like to code. See More

GameMaker: Studio is incredibly easy to learn. It requires almost no programming knowledge which means that those without the technical experience, such as designers or artists, can create their projects without the help of a programmer. See More

1994 304

score 452 · Answer 3

GameMaker: Studio

Top Pro

Extremely easy to learn

Top Con

The scripting language used is quite limited

Language does not support actual objects, structs, real data types, functions, overloading, even argument naming. Developers generally have to code around the lack of these features in very tricky ways. See More

Top Pro

Gives developers access to a more fine-grained controle over the logic through the Game Maker Language

Game Maker Language (GML) is the primary scripting language that is interpreted similarly to Java's Just-In-Time compilation used in GameMaker. It is used to further enhance and control the design of a game through more conventional programming, as opposed to the drag and drop system. See More

Top Con

No GUI editor

The GUI must be hard-coded, leaving a lot of tricky calculations and jumping through hoops to accommodate different devices and displays; it's probably the least developed and hardest thing about GMS2 compared to comparable engines See More

Top Pro

Easy to find resources/tutorials/assistance

GameMaker: Studio has a huge following, tons of people put up tutorial videos, and it's just generally easy to find help. It has a huge community. See More

Top Con

Destructive DRM

In late 2012/early 2013, YoYo Games released a version of their new Studio IDE for cross-platform development that would import games and destroy all of the image type resources for some legitimate purchasers of the software by superimposing a pirate symbol on top of the image. This was due to a fault in their digital rights management software implementation which they use as a method of combating pirated copies of the software. Though the false positives bug is reported to be fixed, the DRM is still in place and may affect placeholder graphics, etc. YoYoGames publicly stated they would remove the DRM at a later point in time, but that other less-invasive DRM techniques would remain. See More

Top Pro

Easy cross-platform shader support

Write your own shaders in one shader language and have it automatically ported to all platforms. You can even choose a specific shader language to wield the full power of the target device. See More

Top Con

Exporting to some formats costs extra

You need to buy extra modules to be able to export to platforms like Android, iOS, HTML5 and others. See More

Top Pro

Assets can easily be found in the official marketplace

Yoyogames website has a marketplace which opens up an opportunity for people to sell or giveaway created assets and resources (sprites, scripts, sounds, extensions, full source codes, etc.) for use in GameMaker. This benefits people who needs quality assets for their games, and for creative people to provide these assets for extra income. The Marketplace has a rating system so it can eventually increase the quality and competitiveness of the assets submitted. See More

Top Con

No built-in refactoring tools

There are no built-in refactoring tools. For example, you can rename a resource, but GM:S will not automatically change the mentions of it across the code to the new name. Furthermore, because all file formats are text-based, basic refactoring could be achieved by simply doing "find & replace in all files" -- which is a feature offered by pretty much every external code editor nowadays -- but no such feature here. Hitting Ctrl-F will pull up a rather odd Find/Replace box but selecting a word before hitting Ctrl-F will not autofill the Find field for you like it will in most tools. Even that you have to cut and paste yourself. See More

Top Pro

It has an IDE used for loading all of the assets

It is very easy to manage all the resources you want to put in your game, the UI widgets for each assets (sprites, sounds, backgrounds, rooms, objects and shaders) are intuitive enough for when adding or even editing the properties of each your assets. The included editors are also good and easy to use (sprite/image editors, shader editor and room editor). See More

Top Con

The cost to buy for development is outrageous

The cost for this tool is hindering for indie developers who have little money to work with. See More

Top Pro

Extremely stable

GameMaker: Studio has been around since 1999 and has been used and maintained during all this time. This makes it an extremely stable game engine. See More

Top Con

Bad history of ignoring critical bugs

In the past, the developer failed to update the software for iOS and Android when game-breaking updates were made to those platforms. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform multiplayer support

There is the possibility of creating games that interact with different platforms and is not that hard. See More

Top Con

Poor level editor

No marquee select, no layers, can be glitchy, no grouping, etc. See More

Top Pro

Built-in support for pixel-perfect collisions

Enabling pixel-perfect collisions on 2D sprites is so easy many will likely turn it on when maybe they might be better off without it. Regardless, it simplifies small and/or retro console-like game work. This is a feature fairly unique in this class of game engines. See More

Top Con

Development has been and will be cosmetic

The change from 1.x to 2.x was cosmetic, the engine and language stayed the same. The roadmap for future development is also cosmetic and includes updating the sprite editor, adding an audio editor, and adding a "mini map" for the IDE. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

GameMaker: Studio projects can be deployed to: HTML5, Linux, Windows, OS X, Windows Phone, Android, iOS and PS3/4/Vita. See More

Top Con

Expensive for what it offers

There are several options with more flexibility, better learning resources, and a lower price point. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Game Maker Studios simple interface allows for rapid prototyping, and easy development. See More

Top Con

Proprietary language forces expensive "lock in"

Because it uses GML, a very non-standard custom language, new users do not learn a transferrable language and become locked in. See More

Top Pro

Supports 3D

There is also 3D support that doesn't interfere with the primary 2D focus. See More

Top Con

Can't embed videos in game

Doesn't support embedding videos in a game. See More

Top Pro

Easy to add native code to GMS

Good extension support. You can do anything with gms! You just need to know how to code natively in the respectively export (like Android). See More

Top Con

Tends to crash or not compile games properly

Top Con

Poor accessibility and integration

Documentation and resources largely focus on proprietary scripting language, which is necessary for achieving full potential of the software due to poor drag and drop integration. See More

Top Con

No way to activate or use existing modules

Support entirely focused on new iteration depriving even basic functionality of this version with any purchase that hasn't already been activated. It is still possible, thought not intuitive, to download this version on the trail screen for GM S 2. But no purchased (wildly expensive) module can be added any longer. See More

Top Con

Code editor not friendly to indented code

While the editor of course has features for intending code such as auto indent and smart tabs that can be turned on or off, these features work in unusual ways and, overall, the editor is not very adaptable to various typing styles. Also, Home always takes you to position 0 and never to the beginning of the text no matter how many times you hit it. Thus, if you hit Home and then Enter a new line, with auto indent on, it will always mess up the indentation on the line following the new line leaving you to fudge around to fix it manually. If you prefer tabs over spaces, forget it. Finally, if you leave the GameMaker app and try to click back into the code editor, the code editor will not fully get the focus sometimes leaving you with the ability to type but not tab. It usually takes two clicks to fully focus the code editor from outside the GM app. See More

Top Con

This is very flat for games

They are not beautiful - for example, Undertale. See More

Top Con

Owned by a gambling company, Playtech

As opposed to other engines, which are open source or owned by game companies, GameMaker is developed by YoYoGames, which is owned by Playtech, a gambling software company. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, macOS, ARM

Languages:banterr

Desktop targets:Windows, Linux, macOS, Windows UWP, HTML5

Mobile targets:Android, iOS, (deprecated: Windows Phone, Tizen)

Construct 2 is fast to pick up, get into, and belt out some pretty impressive games in a relatively small amount of time. Seems to be built for people who don't have a lot of programming skills, but want to make great games. See More

452 120

score 542 · Answer 4

Construct 2

Top Pro

Quick to pick up

Top Con

Poor mobile performance

Construct 2 is focused on Javascript. Javascript isn't as fast as native code, which results in poor performance on mobile. See More

Top Pro

Simplicity - it is made for everybody to use and love

Construct 2 is a tool for not just programmers, but artists as well. You can create a game with only visual coding, which is easy to learn and doesn't require any previous programming knowledge. You can focus on making your game better instead of just coding. It has some limitations of course, but it's definitely worth it. See More

Top Con

Free version is severely limited

Although a free version of the engine is available, it lacks features that are essential to creating a high quality product. See More

Top Pro

Little programming knowledge needed

Using Construct 2 requires very little programming knowledge because it's all drag'n'drop, intuitive, visual and event-driven instead of code-only. See More

Top Con

The editor is Windows only

Although Construct 2 is able to export projects to Windows, OS X and Linux, the program itself currently only runs on Windows. See More

Top Pro

Built-in physics system

Thanks to the great power of Erin Catto's Box2D, Construct 2 is able to make physics games which are similar to Cut the Rope and Angry Birds. See More

Top Con

HTML5 is very dependent on browser performance

Theoretically all browsers should run HTML5 pretty much the same way, but thats not always the case. Something that worked fine on Chrome, for instance, might malfunction on Firefox (or vice versa). And there's nothing the devs of Construct 2 can really do about it, but to hope next Firefox update might fix it. Internet Explorer is not even recommended. Add to that the fact that exporting to mobile or desktops rely on these sort of stripped down versions of web browsers (Node webkit, Crosswalk, Ejecta) that you pack with your game, and you can have a real headache if you're trying to make your game work properly through multiple platforms. See More

Top Pro

Cordova support

You can use Cordova plugins from the community See More

Top Con

Does not export to native mobile code

Construct 2 builds to HTML 5 only, which can cause performance issues on mobile devices depending on the HTML5 engine that the OS is using since that will be the biggest bottleneck. Even though it's not really the engine's fault, it still is at a disadvantage compared to native game engines. See More

Top Pro

In-depth event system

Construct 2's event system allows for deep, detailed control over all aspects of your game. You aren't limited to just a few options. Rather, Scirra has thought of nearly everything in advance with access to any desired parameter of any object all paired with simple and intuitive ways to interact with them. Your events can be organized with event sheets (that can be included in other sheets), event groups, sub-events, loops, and functions that make the coding portion of your game as efficient as possible. You don't need any programming knowledge, but if you do have some, you'll feel right at home with the freedom C2 offers. See More

Top Con

Discontinued as of July 2021, in favor of Construct 3

Construct 2 licenses cannot be bought anymore since July 2020, and support has ended on July 1st 2021 with the release of the final r280 version (see here). Existing customers can still use the game engine, but it will no longer be updated. See More

Top Pro

Supportive community

Construct 2 has a supportive community. Their forums have tens of thousands of topics with ten times more posts. The core maintainers are very helpful and friendly and often reply to questions or issues that may be discussed in the forums. See More

Top Con

Clickteam Fusion Clone

This is a copy of the Clickteam softwares See More

Top Pro

Easy to create particles and animations

With spriter file implementation and internal animation editor Construct 2 provides an easy way of creating particles and animations. See More

Top Con

Dependency on 3rd parties for all exports

Unless you are creating a game strictly for browser/HTML5 usage, exporting to desktop or mobile is risky, as Scirra have no control over your final export quality. Since desktop uses NodeWebkit and mobile is Crosswalk, Phonegap or CocoonJS there is no guarantee that your final export performance and quality will be up to scratch for pro level 2d games. These 3rd party "browser wrappers" are very prone to breaking and introducing lag and bugs that can't be controlled from Scirra's side. See More

Top Pro

Free (feature limited) version available

A free version of Construct 2 is available. It's not time restricted in any way, but is feature limited. See More

Top Con

HTML5 Only is extremely limiting

If the software could export natively to mobile devices and PC/Mac/Linux it would be extremely powerful. The developer's choice of sticking to only HTML5 has created a bottleneck for anyone wanting to develop with this software. See More

Top Pro

Active plugin ecosystem

Construct 2 has an active plugin ecosystem providing behaviors and features that smooth the workflow for certain game types. See More

Top Con

Tilemap object could be better

C2 requires that there's a tilemap objects for each tilemap layer meaning each tilemap object has to be updated when modifying any layer. This could be simplified by adding layer support for tilemap objects. See More

Top Pro

Export control for all major platforms

All platform exporters are part of the subscription. There are no additional fees and new exporters are added quickly and maintained well. Currently, 15 platforms are supported, including HMTL 5, iOS, Android, Windows, Chrome Store, PhoneGap and Scirra. See More

Top Con

Buggy

Experience regular crashes and inexplicable project file corruption. See More

Top Pro

Built in behaviors make development workflows very efficient

Behaviors add pre-packaged functionality to object types. See More

Top Con

Unreliable access to online resources

Unreliable access to online resources such as online tutorials and forums, plus extremely outdated offline manual. See More

Top Pro

Very fast preview

In Construct 2 you can preview your games instantly at any time. There’s no need to wait for compiling or other time consuming processes. See More

Top Pro

Available on Steam

You can also download Construct 2 on Steam. See More

Top Pro

One-off cost

It's a one off cost for Construct 2 and all updates to the Construct 2 editor are free for life. See More

Top Pro

Supports camera, microphone, speech recognition and synthesis

Can use cameras in PCs and on mobiles. You can use the synthesis that can recognize your speech or you can write something and it can talk for you. See More

Top Pro

Interface similar to that of MS office

This engine provides an intuitive workflow for people that are used to the Windows environment. See More

Top Pro

Runs great on mobile

Performs well on most devices and browsers. See More

Top Pro

Rapid development

After using a few quick tutorials you can quickly catch on to the event system this program uses and quickly be able to build any type of 2D game you want. You can download a few sprites from google and put together a working level of Mega Man with character movement / animation / enemies / collision detection / scoring / Tile map and AI within about 2 hours. The built in behaviors are incredible. It's amazing how Construct can simplify the most redundant tasks in game development. See More

Top Pro

Allow server-less multiplayer game creation

Construct 2 uses WebRTC technology to support it's multiplayer functionality. The nature of the technology allows peer-to-peer connection which does not require game developer to create server side architecture to allow communication between games. See More

Top Pro

Supportive devs

The developers are always available to help. See More

Top Pro

Built-in animation/image editor

Basic sprites and tiles of 2D games can be made with engine's built-in tools. See More

Top Pro

Built-in pathfinding

Has built-in solutions for pathfinding. See More

Top Pro

Built-in tilemap object

The tilemap object allows tile-based games to be designed more easily. The object's tilemap can also be edited in the layout view using the tilemap bar. See More

Specs

License:Proprietary

Languages:JavaScript (engine)

Desktop targets:Windows XP+, UWP, Mac OS X 10.6+, Linux

Mobile targets:Android 4.0+, iOS 8.0+

Free version already includes most features but a paid version is available. See More

542 149

score 21 · Answer 5

TIC-80

Top Pro

Free

Top Pro

All tools in one place

The app contains tools for coding, sprite editing, map editing, sfx and music editing. See More

Top Pro

Many Scripting languages' supported

Use awesome scripting languages like: Lua, Wren, Moonscript, JS, Ruby, etc. See More

Top Pro

Export

Exports easily to Windows, Windows-XP, mac, Linux and HTML. See More

Top Pro

Retro-styled and restricted environment

Pixelated Software with a good retro style. See More

Top Pro

Noob underdog

You can imagine this engine Shiva Lua scripting language making 2d side scrolling Megaman style games a Bandai trademark. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, Windows, Linux, Mac, Android

Languages:Lua, JavaScript, Moonscript, Fennel, Wren

3D:No

ct.js is bundled with examples, docs, and easy to follow tutorials. Documentation and tutorials are available in a side panel on every screen. See More

21 0

score 20 · Answer 6

ct.js

Top Pro

Beginner-friendly

Top Con

Tile editing is a chore

No live brushes with automatic corner drawing, no fills or rectangular/linear placement. All tiles should be placed by hand, with a "Shift" key to place multiple tiles at once. This will make you ragequit if you want to make sophisticated RPG scenes :D See More

Top Pro

Skeletal animations with DragonBones support

You can import skeletal sprites and animations from DragonBones, which is also free. Skeletal animations are added to objects through code; developers can listen to marked events in animation, and ct.js automatically associates sounds in a DragonBones project with the game's assets. See More

Top Con

Slower than native games

JavaScript and WebGL are fast, but they will always lose in performance if compared to native games, so it may be a bad choice for graphics-heavy games. See More

Top Pro

Good code editor

The built-in code editor comes with error checking, type checks, code completions accompanied with docs, multiple cursors support, and other modern features. See More

Top Pro

Open source (MIT)

This means that no one will ever put any features behind a paywall and that you can reliably use ct.js in any projects without worrying about licensing. And you can hack on ct.js! The repo is at https://github.com/ct-js/ct-js See More

Top Pro

Tileset support

ct.js supports tiles in rooms, including collision checks and some extra editor tools, like bulk migration to a new tile layer or shifting by an exact value. See More

Top Pro

WebGL and WebGL2 support

Starting with v1.0.0-next-1, you can now write WebGL games. WebGL support is based on Pixi.js. See More

Top Pro

Modular approach

ct.js has a "Core" library that provides basic drawing functions, room and asset management, and mouse interactions. Any other functions are added to projects as "catmods", or simply modules. These modules can be enabled or disabled in one click, and can inject their code in different game loop stages, e.g. after drawing all the objects, leaving a room, or when a new object is created. See More

Top Pro

Applicable to most genres

ct.js aims to be a general game engine and provides tools in making games of any genre. See More

Top Pro

Dialogue and visual novel system with support for Yarn

A module ct.yarn allows developers to import a YarnSpinner project to create branching, data-driven dialogues and visual novels. An example is also bundled with ct.js. The dialogue tree is made in a separate app, though. See More

Top Pro

Real-time particle system editor

v1.3 brings a particle system editor, which displays a preview sprite for proper attachment of emitter to visual elements, and allows combining more than one emitter with different particles into one effect. With these, even the creation of complex, multi-step effects becomes easy. The editor comes with dozens ready-made textures for faster prototyping. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows, OSX, Linux

Languages:JavaScript

Desktop targets:Windows, OSX, Linux, HTML5

Corona SDK is completely free. That includes pro-tier plugins. See More

20 0

score 375 · Answer 7

Solar 2D (formerly Corona SDK)

Top Pro

Very simple to use

Top Con

Free, but not completely

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

Making a device build requires internet connection

To build your app for the device (iOS/Android/AppleTV) Corona requires to fetch resources from online. This would include base application template and plugins. This allows not to perform local build or use Xcode or Android Studio to do a build. Even Large games/apps would build very fast with good internet connection. Your code never leaves computed. Corona SDK would transfer some information to determine which plugins and pieces has to be transferred in order to make a final steps in build. As a bonus - you get basically one button press to get from your Corona Simulator game to game on a device. See More

Top Pro

Corona Simulator

Corona SDK ships with Corona Simulator, which runs your game/app directly on your PC/Mac and updates every time you make changes. It provides immediate feedback to your actions, you can see your changes right on the screen, without necessity to make build to device. Getting instant feedback really boosts tenfold prototyping and development speed. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation and lots of tutorials

Top Pro

Content scaling

It's easy to create a game that looks good on many different sized mobile devices. See More

Top Pro

Live builds - update builds running on a device automatically

With the live build feature, once you have created a build and installed on a device, you get lightning fast turnaround times because any change on the code or data is updated to the devices running the game (within the local WiFi) immediately. So changes can be tested on the real hardware within a very few seconds. What's even more impressive, this even works flawless with multiple devices running the game. You have to use it to learn how good of a feature this is while development and even more, while doing QA. Imagine fixing bugs and everyone of your QA team/friends/whoever helps to get your game done, has all changes on his device without doing anything but waiting 5 seconds - outstanding. See More

Top Pro

Lua syntax

Uses the great and easy-to-learn Lua programming language. See More

Top Pro

Very comprehensive API

It's very quick to get things up and running with Corona SDK. The API is extensive and while it's not 100% feature-complete with the iOS API, it's close enough that you could create tons of games and never run into a roadblock. The API docs can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Amazing learning curve

Corona does not throw photoshop-like madness full of buttons editor. You can go as fast as you want, learning and building game from ground up. Eventually, you'll learn how much corona is doing for you. But to start you don't have to master complex editor software. It's a great tool to learn to start game development if you want to learn how to program and make games. Your experience will be 100% transferable to any other Pro game engine. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform desktop and mobile

Corona works on OS X, Windows and Android (including Kindle Fire & Nook). See More

Top Pro

Marketplace for 3rd party plug-ins

Top Pro

Great community

Top Pro

Ability to call any native (C/C++/Obj-C/Java) library

Top Pro

Completely free

Since Corona SDK became Solar2D, it's completely free, as only some third-party plugins are paid. See More

Top Pro

Open Source

Since Corona SDK became Solar2D, it's completely open source under MIT license. See More

Top Pro

Well supported

Specs

Price:Free

Languages:Lua

Dev platforms:Windows; Macintosh

Desktop targets:Windows; Macintosh

Power users can also write code in Haxe (similar to Actionscript 3) to create their own custom classes and extend the engine. See More

375 49

score 247 · Answer 8

Stencyl

Top Pro

Haxe scripting available for advanced users

Top Con

Not a powerful engine

Should be used for basic games only. See More

Top Pro

No coding required, great drag & drop interface

Visual scripting in Stencyl is based on the MIT Scratch project, which was designed to teach programming. Script elements fit together like puzzle pieces, ensuring that data and function types cannot be mismatched. See More

Top Con

Only available via subscription

There should be an option to buy it outright, especially considering it is written by a one man team....this is not exactly an Adobe level enterprise with shareholders, so there is no excuse! See More

Top Pro

Cross-Platform

Publish iOS, Android, Flash, Windows and Mac games without code. See More

Top Con

Slow release cycle

Top Pro

It's a NO-CODE Program, you can add logic without code

Top Con

Updated

It needs much to improve for mobile games, it was left in the era of Flash games. In Android you can not even put the native keyboard, you can not access things like native camera, GPS or native text input. See More

Top Pro

The original concept for Ghost Song was created using Stencyl

The original concept for Ghost Song was created using Stencyl 3.x See More

Top Con

Tile system is somewhat inflexible

Top Pro

Great performance on every platform

Stencyl exports your games to native code so they have great performance on every platform. See More

Specs

License:Proprietary (editor), MIT (engine)

Languages:Java (editor), Haxe (engine)

Dev platforms:Windows 7+, Macintosh 10.14+, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows 7+, Macintosh 10.14+, Linux

If you don't have your Chromebook, Construct 3 will run in the browser. See More

247 36

score 26 · Answer 9

Construct 3

Top Pro

Runs in the browser

Top Con

Subscription based

It is subscription based pricing. It might not be for everyone. See More

Top Pro

Fast and small

Construct 3 loads really fast. See More

Top Pro

Timeline

It has a timeline feature which allows you to make amazing animations. See More

Top Pro

No installation required

As it runs in the browser you can load it on any computer and show your friends your work really quickly. See More

Top Pro

Works on Chromebooks

Construct 3 works on a Chromebook without any issues. See More

26 7

score 336 · Answer 10

Cocos2d-x and Cocos Creator

Top Pro

A proven engine for mobile development

25% of iPhone games are made using Cocos2d-x. This means you will not be alone in development, and will have access to a large community. You'll know you are developing for an engine that works. See More

Top Con

Poor support and non-existent community

Up until 2013, this was one of the best engines around. However, since then it was bought by a Chinese company and began stagnating - it's virtually in a slow death. Most developers abandoned Cocos in favor of more modern solutions leaving the community weak and the forums with little or no traffic. Although the Cocos2d-x Forum seems to have a decent community going. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation

Documentation includes a programming guide, API reference, video tutorials and massive reference test code project showing all functions and giving working code to the user. See More

Top Con

No Graphics user interface

Top Pro

Supports 3D models with skeleton animation

A new feature since Cocos2d-x v3.1 is support for 3D models (in your 2D game), not only this but support for skeleton animations is included too! This awesome feature allows for impressive characters in your game along with easier, more fluid and realistic animations. See More

Top Con

Modest functionality

Almost all free alternatives are more convenient, faster, and more functional. See More

Top Pro

Great script language support

It supports Lua and Javascript with full feature support. Especially with Cocos2d-JS you can develop games cross web and native, and the native solution have great performance with JS Bindings, much better than hybrid solution. See More

Top Pro

Highly active community for questions and support

Cocos2d-x forums are active. See More

Top Pro

OpenGL hardware acceleration

Top Pro

Future-proof

Cocos2d-x is not only open source but also supported by Chukong Technologies of China and USA. Regularly updated and adding support for the latest technologies. 2014 has already seen the release of Version 3, a new Cocos Studio development toolkit (optional) and support for new technologies like skeleton animation systems Spine and Adobe DragonBone. See More

Top Pro

Greater performance than high level APIs

Cocos2d-x is C++ based engine and it has CPU advantages for most platforms because of that. It uses polygonal mesh methods for sprite rendering for using GPU advantages. (You also use quad methods for benefit CPU). See More

Top Pro

No external dependencies

Because it is based on Pyglet. See More

Top Pro

One code for all platforms

On top of supporting pretty much all existing platforms (except consoles), Cocos Creator (Cocos's IDE) allows you to write 1 code that runs on Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS and HTML5 (not Linux though). See More

Top Pro

Easy integration of 3rd party plugins

Through the use of SDKBox you can easily integrate 3rd party SDKs and plugins for each version of Cocos2D (Lua, C++ or JavaScript), you just choose the SDKs to integrate and SDKBox will do the rest. For example, if you want to add a rating plugin, you use sdkbox::PluginReview::init(); and if you want to add the Vundle Ad Network SDK, you use the one packaged in SDKBox SDKBOX sdkbox::PluginVungle::init();. See More

Top Pro

Allows for easy debugging

It has a built-in Python interpreter that allows for easy debugging. See More

Top Pro

Very good IDE

Cocos Creator (Cocos' IDE) comes with scene editing, UI editor, animations & particle editors and whatnot. It's also easy to use and pretty intuitive if you read the official documentation & tutorials. Way way better than the old CocoStudio. See More

Top Pro

Great video tutorials

Hundreds of video tutorials available. See More

Specs

Languages:C++; Lua; JavaScript; TypeScript (Creator only)

Dev platforms:Windows; macOS

Desktop targets:Windows; macOS; Linux; HTML5 (Creator only)

The engine, including full access to source code, is free to use; a 5% royalty is due only when you monetize your game or other interactive off-the-shelf product and your gross revenues from that product exceed $1,000,000 USD. See More

336 61

score 784 · Answer 11

Unreal Engine 4

Top Pro

Free development license, including source code

Top Con

Very high build size

A blank project will build in to a minimum of 200 MB. See More

Top Pro

Developers have full control of the engine and source code

UE4 gives full access to the C++ source code allowing editing and upgrading anything in the system. See More

Top Con

Slow

Compared to other engines, UE4 seems to perform various actions considerably slower. Actions like starting the engine, opening the editor, opening a project, rebuilding shaders, updating references, calculating lightmaps, saving projects, etc take long enough to get irritating and end up wasting precious development time. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic global illumination with voxel cone tracing decreases the computational power needed

Voxel cone tracing is a similar algorithm to ray tracing, but uses thick rays instead of pixel thin rays to be able vastly decrease the amount of computational power needed. See More

Top Con

Extremely long build times

Making a full rebuild, including engine can take a good 30minutes. If you plan to use Unreal professionally, you better get some licenses for Incredibuild as well. See More

Top Pro

A visual scripting system for non-coders enables quick prototyping

Blueprints are authoring tools designed for non programmers so designers and other team members can help tweak and prototype. UE4's Blueprint scripts resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish and games a lot faster to prototype. See More

Top Con

Hard engine for beginners

This engine not easy for beginners See More

Top Pro

Lots of resources to learn from

Epic provides multiple official video tutorials, lots of free example projects and content, an extensive wiki and regular streams showing how to use latest features. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Especially when compared to its primary competitor, Unity. See More

Top Pro

Powerful material/shader system

Allows a texture/material artist or VFX artist to create amazing effects from the ground up. See More

Top Con

C++ - oriented development cycle: slow turn-around times

The Unreal Editor is the main place to do stuff (of course), so if someone wants to do a lot of C++ stuff, the compilation and linking turn-around times can be painful. Still they probably are quite fast in comparison to the provided featureset.. Still ,they are far from optimal. See More

Top Pro

Spectacular lighting visuals

Top Con

Poor documentation

Most of the "documentation" for code is actually just automatically generated from the source. If you're interested in knowing how things are supposed to work, you must either go to their answers site or pay for UDN. Often their examples won't even compile, since they were written for now outdated versions. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform editor and export

This engine exports for a big range of platforms including Linux. The editor can be run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux (Early Access). See More

Top Con

Royalty based

5% of profits will go to Unreal after $3000 earned in a quarter. See More

Top Pro

Active community

Forums have many active and friendly members that are quick to respond and help out. Even staff is very active on forums. See More

Top Con

They spend more time adding features than fixing existing ones

Top Pro

AAA Ready

This is ready to make the next AAA game. See More

Top Con

C# not natively supported

UE4 does not support C# natively, but this can be achieved through MonoUE, although it requires using the MonoUE fork instead of UE itself. See More

Top Pro

Fast compilation for quick iteration

Recompiling an entire game to test a small change takes up a lot of time. UE4 quickly compiles in seconds instead of minutes improving iteration time by an order of magnitude. See More

Top Con

Poor quality assurance on their releases

After each release they almost immediately release a hotfix. And another one. And another one. See More

Top Pro

Quick release-cycle

New feature releases can be commonly expected about once a month. See More

Top Con

Poor source control support

Merge tool is not working. See More

Top Pro

Realistic graphics

Top Con

Extremely poorly designed

The code is a mess. Everything is connected, a single Actor is 1500 bytes, because it contains a million things that Epic once needed in a game. Inheritance for AActor: AActor > UObject > UObjectBaseUtility > UObjectBase See More

Top Pro

Easy to use animation blueprints

Unreal Engine 4 is one of the best game engines. It is super easy. It dosent require any use of coding due to Animation Blueprints See More

Top Con

Tutorials do not go in-depth enough

The blueprint tutorial just teaches how to turn on a light when you press f. See More

Top Pro

Professional feature set for all aspects of game development

Almost everything a game developer wants has a deep and sophisticated tool waiting for them in UE4. No external plugins are needed to make powerful materials, FX, terrain, cinematics, gameplay logic, AI, animation graphs, post process effects, lighting etc. See More

Top Con

Difficult for Mac users

If you're installing it on Mac, you simply download Epic games launcher and watch it download nothing endlessly. See More

Top Pro

Proven track record

Top Con

Unreal Engine crashes a lot if you don't have the required system requirements

Top Pro

No coding experience needed

Top Con

Not available on Linux

Top Con

Proprietary

Top Con

No Terrain Editor included

Top Con

Bad support

The epic games team only assists with billing and account issues, not bugs. See More

Top Con

Terrible physics

Top Con

Sparse Resources for C++

C++ happens to be the main suite for Unreal, yet the documentation is very, very sparse. See More

Top Con

No drawcall batching, performance is very bad on mobile

There's no dynamic batching support to minimize drawcalls. There's InstancedStaticmesh concept in UE4, but it's 3d only, functionally limited and requires hardware support which rules out most mobile devices. See More

Top Con

Frequent crashes

Often the editor crashes interrupting your work. See More

Top Con

Poor error messages

Top Con

Rarely works

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

Languages:C++, Blueprints (Visual Scripting)

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, SteamOs, HTML5

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

Defold uses Lua, which is regarded as an easy to learn language by most. See More

784 179

score 174 · Answer 12

Defold

Top Pro

Easy to learn

Top Pro

Completely free of charge

Software and online dashboard are free of charge. See More

Top Pro

Good combination of visual editing + code (Lua)

You can do a lot with drag and drop, but you're not limited -- the code (Lua, which is easy to learn) allows you more power than just visual editing usually gives you. See More

Top Pro

Fast results

Going from idea to result is very important for the creative process. See More

Top Pro

Very performant

Being crossplatform it is important to work on low end devices. See More

Top Pro

Visual editor

Top Pro

Easy and fast export for various platforms

Top Pro

Source code available

You can download and modify the source code of the Editor and the engine for free. See More

Top Pro

Great community

A very active and friendly community in forums. See More

Top Pro

Collaborative

You can invite friends from the dashboard and create games together. See More

Top Pro

Hot reload

It allows you to change scripts in a game while it is running live. Common use-cases is to tweak gameplay parameters or to perform debugging on a running game. See More

Specs

Languages:Lua

Dev platforms:Windows; Linux; OSX

Desktop targets:Windows; Linux; HTML5; OSX

Mobile targets:iOS; Android; FB Instant Games

Scratch was developed specifically for kids ages 8 and up as an exciting way to introduce them to technology. It's designed to be easy to learn, but still provides good depth in computational thinking. See More

174 66

score 89 · Answer 13

Scratch

Top Pro

Great starting point for kids

Top Con

For kids

For kids. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn

Scratch is designed to teach computational thinking rather than focus on specific syntax. It was designed specifically to be easy to learn for anyone over the age of 8. See More

Top Con

Won't get you a job

Scratch is not a language used in the workplace. Instead it teaches computational thinking, helping to create a foundation to aid in learning other languages. See More

Top Pro

Visual

Code is represented as visual building blocks that makes it easy to understand how a program is put together. See More

Top Con

Does not teach you programming

Learning Scratch might help you if you have high difficulty with logical thinking. However, starting with a proper programming language, especially an easy one, will give you the benefits of starting with something like Scratch and everything else. See More

Top Pro

No need to be able to type

Top Con

Strange OOP

Scratch has a very strange implementation of OOP that is sprite based, and will become very confusing when you move to other languages. See More

Top Pro

Can be used to create games

Top Con

Weird

It's straight up weird. See More

Top Pro

Highly structured

The language is highly structured. Therefore, it gives you the essentials of how to think like a programmer and teaches you good programming practices from early on, so you could write clean, working and readable code in the future. See More

Prebuilt behaviors can be added to objects. This is a very efficient way to add a physics engine or make a platformer game. Lots of behaviors are included, from the most advanced (Physics, platformer, top-down movement) to really simple ones (like the behavior to destroy objects when outside the screen or the one to drag objects with mouse or touch). See More

89 45

score 42 · Answer 14

GDevApp

Top Pro

Quickly add behaviors to objects

Top Con

Depends on a hosting service

If the website goes down or closes down, you'll no longer be able to develop your games using this system (but you can download a backup of your game from time to time and open it with GDevelop). See More

Top Pro

Powerful events system to create games without programming

No need for coding using this system which is clear and powerful: events are composed of conditions and actions. Actions are launched when conditions are fulfilled. This is a very beginner-friendly way of making games and is still efficient for advanced usage, contrary to most other "block"/"drag'n'drop" systems. See More

Top Con

Cannot deploy native games

For now, games developed with GDevApp can only be deployed for the Web. Android deployment is in the works, but even then, they won't be native since they are built with web technologies. See More

Top Pro

Intuitive interface

Top Pro

Based on GDevelop

The entire webapp is based on GDevelop, an open source native game development software available for Windows & Linux, so it benefits from its advanced development. See More

Top Pro

Can download an archive of the game source

Even though the tool depends on having a server up and running, you can download a copy of your game to run locally, or host somewhere else. See More

Top Pro

Great UI

Sleek and user-friendly UI. See More

Top Pro

Can export your game as HTML5 and for Android

Games can be packaged for Android without relying on any third party tool. You can also export your game and download it to host it on your server or let it be hosted on GDevApp.com. See More

Top Pro

Shallow learning curve

Specs

Mobile targets:Android (planned)

While technically capable of creating 2D games in any genre, Ren'Py excels in creating visual novels and has a reasonable feature set for creating puzzle and point-and-click games. Other genres are best tackled by other engines. See More

42 7

score 40 · Answer 15

Ren'Py

Top Con

Not for every genre

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Available on Windows, Linux, OSX, iOS and Android. See More

Top Con

Outdated Documentation and official built-in tutorials

Unfortunately, you will have to hunt relevant info on how Ren'py script works. The Ren'Py dev has the working tutorials on his Patreon, other than that you might as well just code in Python. See More

Top Pro

Active and friendly community

Top Con

Requires knowledge of Python to use

Top Pro

Reasonably good at creating puzzle and point-and-click games

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android

Languages:Python, Cython

Pygame uses Python as its scripting language. Python is widely considered one of the easiest languages to grasp even for beginners. See More

40 7

score 297 · Answer 16

pygame

Top Pro

Easy Python syntax

Top Con

Deathly slow

Top Pro

Very easy to understand

The API is very straightforward. See More

Top Con

Nonexistent community

No good forums, wiki, or other ways to reach other Pygame developers. See More

Top Pro

Good canvas system

Pygame has a drawing system that allows the user to create and draw on an unlimited number of canvases. See More

Top Con

Very basic

Pretty much just a wrapper for SDL. See More

Top Con

Pygame is a multimedia framework, not a game engine

Physics, AI and networking are not supported. See More

Top Con

Messy documentation

The docs are messy, and some basic functions are infuriating to work out. There's even some places in the documentation where it's clearly wrong about how a method is called/what the arguments really do. See More

Top Con

Outdated

Pygame uses a really old version of SDL and is missing some of the features developed for SDL2. See More

Top Con

Hasn't been updated in years

Hasn't been updated in years. See More

Specs

License:LGPL

It's possible to create a game with absolutely no art or coding skills, so even complete beginners can make something. See More

297 33

score 152 · Answer 17

RPGMaker

Top Pro

Easy to jump into using an intuitive WYSIWYG editor

Top Con

You have to code when you want something didn't built in

You know,RM series' default walk animation only has three frames.If you want to enhance,you have to code by yourself——especially majority of it's user are newbies. See More

Top Pro

Large and active community

The engine has seen multiple iterations since 1995, so a large online community exists that is always willing to help each other out. See More

Top Con

No Hardware accelerate

You'll get a bad performance when you have big animations,especially in MV,which can easily change into higher resolution. See More

Top Pro

Ruby / Javascript support provides depth to more experienced developers

With a script editor that uses a modified version of Ruby, it's possible to go well beyond the traditional RPG with this engine. Note: XP and VX use Ruby, the latest version "MV" uses Javascript for scripting. See More

Top Con

No 3D support

None of them have 3D support, it is possible only with manual scripting which could be difficult for beginners. See More

Top Pro

It's an open engine

It's possible to use custom editors from the community, edit libraries,include libraries,etc (MV Only) See More

Top Con

MV Does not have a "REAL" Android export.

MV has an export to HTML5 - which can run on any browser including android. It is however not a "native" app export. See More

Top Pro

Multi-platform

MV supports HTML5 exports, so it is easier than ever to make your game work on iOS, android, OSX,Linux or Windows. See More

Top Con

Inconsistent included visual assets

Included visual assets within MV have inconsistent presentation. Though RPMMV does contain enough to make a small basic title, the visual assets don't often look like they should be mixed on-screen. See More

Top Pro

Inbuilt database and multplayer plugins, providing you the scalfolding to customising your projects with ease

The inbuilt database which binds to game saves or can be made persist allows great power within your logic. Also a plugin called 'Alpha.net' provides multiplayer. This combination can allow great customisation of the engine, allowing a powerful 2D game to be made with little to no coding experience. See More

Top Con

No built-in realtime battle system

RPG Maker series has only turn based battle systems, unless scripts/Plugins made by the community are used. See More

Top Pro

Greater Map layers

MV Mapping uses an additional layer to create better depth. See More

Top Con

Conversion to MV difficult

Older iterations of RPG Maker use smaller sprite sizes that require manual conversion to use older RTP assets and older assets are more robust. See More

Top Pro

MV has HTML5 export

You can now HTML5 export your projects, so you could theoretically host your game on your webserver, and have your friends play the game without ever having to install a single thing. See More

Top Pro

A cheap license that allows using the software commercially

There are several versions of RPG maker, with MV being the latest and most fully featured: MV ($79.99), VX Ace ($69.99), VX ($59.99) and XP ($24.99), 2003 ($19.99). See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS

Languages:JavaScript

Desktop targets:Windows, macOS, Web

Mobile targets:Android, iOS

The LÖVE forums are extremely helpful. With people checking the forums every day, it won't take long to receive answer to your questions on the Support board, receive feedback on games you post in the Projects board, as well as have a chat about the LÖVE engine while learning tricks to use in the very active General board. If you need an immediate answer though, or just want to chat, there is a very active and helpful IRC channel. See More

152 22

score 509 · Answer 18

LÖVE

Top Pro

Active and very friendly community

Top Con

Not very powerful

The engine has very few modules and only the really required one, you'll have to do almost everything from scratch. See More

Top Pro

Great for prototyping

You can learn the basics very quickly and start making simple games in no time, even if you have no previous Lua knowledge. If you're a little experienced with LÖVE, you can prototype a 2D game with it in no time. See More

Top Con

Game distribution is harder than it should

The process to create an executable could be streamlined: the dedicated wiki page is somewhat confusing, and the actual process either means relying on one of the various community-maintained tools or creating an executable manually for each platform. See More

Top Pro

Uses the fantastic Lua for scripting

Lua is an embeddable scripting language designed to be lightweight, fast yet powerful. It is used in major titles such as Civilization as well as a lot of indie games. Lua is very popular because it provides "meta language" features. You can implement object-oriented structures, or pure procedural functions, etc. It has a very simple C interface, and gives the engine developer a lot of flexibility in the language itself. Artists tend to love Lua too because it's very approachable, with plain and forgiving syntax. Lua is free open-source software, distributed under a very liberal license (the well-known MIT license). See More

Top Con

More of an API than a game engine

It may come with graphical, audio and IO but it lack most features most game engines have such as UI system, pathfinding, etc. and you have to implement most of the stuff you might want manually. See More

Top Pro

Easy to understand and use

Lua2D handles loading the resources, reading input, playing sounds and displaying stuff on the screen. Only the logic is left for the developer to write. It also removes the overhead of having to use and learn a GUI game editor. All you need is a knowledge of Lua and your favourite text editor or IDE. See More

Top Con

Only for the very simple games

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Supports Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and iOS. See More

Top Con

Documentation is very dry and technical

The site has plenty of tutorials, true, but they all read very technical, and explain very little. This might be too much for beginners, even for coding purposes, because of the fact that the specifics aren't explained well enough to learn effectively. The docs can be found frustrating to understand even the basics, such as tables or the like, because of how poorly they are explained, and how few examples are given before expecting you to be able to use them. See More

Top Pro

Many examples and libraries with source code

There are plenty of open source examples of games or components built by the community that are ready to use or learn from. See More

Top Con

Game distribution for Android is a pain in the Arse

It is like you're doing a science experiment. See More

Top Pro

Open source and free

The LÖVE engine is licensed under The zlib/libpng License (which is very short and human readable) which allows you to use the source code and even modify it as long as you do not claim that the original source code is yours. You can obtain the code at this bitbucket repository and even help fix bugs and participate in the development of LÖVE. See More

Top Con

HTML5 support

Depends on love.js for HTML5 distribution which is old and incompatible with current Emscripten / LLVM version. See More

Top Pro

Can develop within Android

It is possible to develop games directly on a tablet or cellphone with the Android system by using the experimental Android branch. See More

Top Con

Absolutely no GUI (no graphical interface)

This has no graphical interface at all, you have to know how to read script in order to know what you're looking at. After you've written the script for everything, you compile it to see the result. It's a very poor way to create a game, given how even most professional tools out there give you a GUI to work with and debug on the go. The lack of a GUI slows down the work by ten-fold, and it's just an inefficient use of your time. See More

Top Pro

Very good for education

That is a great tool for teaching novice programmers. Creating a game on LÖVE, you have to think about developing, not about the syntax of the language. See More

Top Con

The community seems juvenile

For example, some of the library include names such as HUMP, LUBE, AnAL. See More

Top Pro

Very good documentation

The LÖVE wiki provides full documentation of its easy to use Modules, which are conveniently located on the side bar of the wiki. It only takes seconds to find the module for love.keyboard, which provided a list of all functions along with arguments and examples where the function could be used. See More

Top Pro

Many tutorials on the internet

Has several tutorials in several languages on the internet, mainly on Youtube. See More

Top Pro

C++ and Lua one of the best languages for gamedev

Because all professionals in gamedev use C++, and Lua the fastest scripting lang. See More

Top Pro

Cute name

So much love. See More

Specs

License:zlib

Languages:C++, Lua 5.1

Dev platforms:Windows Vista+ , macOS 10.7+, Linux, Android 4.0+

Desktop targets:Windows Vista+, macOS 10.7+, Linux