What is the best alternative to BYOND?

Question

score 1110 · Answer 1

Godot

Top Pro

Integrated animation editor

Every property can be animated. See More

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

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

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

Fully dedicated 2D engine, no hacks

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

Top Con

Very bad documentation

The documentation is poorly written, and has very few examples of real application and even fewer design guidelines about how to program a game in the engine. Though it has gotten better starting from version 3.0. 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

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

Built-in physics

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

Top Con

2DPhysics is weak compared to Box2d

Box2d has much more features. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

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

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

Free and open source

Godot is licensed under MIT license. Anyone can grab the source from https://github.com/godotengine/godot, and compile the engine themselves. 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

OSX app is a mess

Instead of one contained folder/file with an icon per normal it is a mess of files which is not at all suitable or distributable without further work after every compilation. 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

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

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 Pro

Internationalization of the editor

You can change the language shown in menus. Godot translations: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/godot-engine/godot/ 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can Be Installed On Steam

You can easily install Godot via the Steam store. 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

Doesn't need to be installed into the system

Godot is very portable I can download the file from my website then put it on a USB and run it on my other Computer without any troublesome errors about Installing the software See More

Specs

License:MIT

Price:Free

Languages:C++(library) C#, GDscript(like python)

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

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1110 218

score 341 · Answer 2

GDevelop

Top Pro

Free and open-source

GDevelop's runtime libraries are MIT licensed. It can be used freely for projects of any type and there are no royalties associated with publishing games developed with GDevelop. See More

Top Con

Still needs more tutorials

It has not bad documentation and forum but still needs more tutorials (although there are some good examples to learn from). See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

The whole interface is intuitive and easy to learn: each part of the game can be designed using visual editors. The objects editor is used to create the objects of the game, the scene editor help you to build the levels of your game and the events editor allows to give life to the whole game without programming. See More

Top Con

No support for atlas/tilemap and sprite sheet

At this point, you need to separate the tileset maps or character animation sprite sheet before importing it to the engine, but the developers are working on this feature. 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 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

Behaviours of Objects are rather generalized.

Since it has a fully GUI editor, the objects you are allowed to add in your game are pretty generalized (PhysicsObject, TiledSprite, PlatformerObject, etc). This limits the freedom of a game developer while making a game, as the object msut follow the preset behaviours imposed on it. See More

Top Pro

Open source plugin SDK

The plugin SDK is open source, so if you want to extend it, you can. See More

Top Con

It's very slow

Although suggested otherwise, GDevelop doesn't compile the games - it just adds wrappers so each OS can run the HTML5 game it creates. That means it runs much, much slower than other engines that do compile games. See More

Top Pro

Support both native and HTML5 games (web and mobile development)

GDevelop is able to create HTML5 games that can run on web browsers and be exported to iOS and Android using solutions like Intel XDK or Cocoon.JS. GDevelop is also one of the only friendly game creator that is able to make native games for Windows and Linux, which are blazing fast and allow to make advanced games with lots of objects, effects and very large levels. See More

Top Con

No cross-compiler

The Windows and Linux versions of GDevelop can each compile a native application; but the Windows version cannot compile for Linux, nor vice versa. See More

Top Pro

Lots of features to build games

The engine includes pathfinding, physics engine, multitouch support, custom hitboxes, platformer engine, tiled maps, multiple layers and cameras out of the box. All of these features can be used without programming knowledge, using the visual editors. See More

Top Pro

Quickly add behaviors to objects

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 one (like the behavior to destroy objects when outside the screen or the one to drag objects with mouse or touch). And you still have full controls over your game as behaviors can be modified using the events! See More

Top Pro

New documentation for gd5 is good for starting

A new doc is improving for gd5 that is nice for beginners and after that you can learn more from examples. Also, gd4 wiki is still there. See More

Top Pro

Multilanguage support

GDevelop is available in many languages and even community can help in translations. See More

Top Pro

Online version available, compatible with iOS and Android

Thanks to its open source nature, GDevApp.com was built over the GDevelop engine. GDevApp.com is a complete game creator similar to GDevelop, available directly in your browser and compatible with iPad and most Android tablets and phone! The app is perfect for making games directly from your sofa and you can even start a game on GDevApp and export it to open it inside GDevelop. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Web

Desktop targets:Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, Web

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341 35

score 429 · Answer 3

Construct 2

Top Pro

Quick to pick up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poor business model

Non-competitive pricing structure with limited license options. Favorable perpetual license dropped for non-favorable subscription service and highly restrictive feature set under new banner. Company does not take criticism well, sometimes becoming threatening over unfavorable feedback. 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

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

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

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

Built in behaviors make development workflows very efficient

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

Top Con

Clickteam Fusion Clone

This is a copy of the Clickteam softwares 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 Con

Buggy

Experience regular crashes and inexplicable project file corruption. See More

Top Pro

Available on Steam

You can also download Construct 2 on Steam. 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

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

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 Pro

Cordova support

You can use Cordova plugins from the community See More

Specs

License:Proprietary

Languages:JavaScript

Dev platforms:Windows

Desktop targets:Windows; Macintosh; Linux

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429 135

score 289 · Answer 4

GameMaker: Studio

Top Pro

Extremely easy to learn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poor level editor

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

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

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

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

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

Can't embed videos in game

Doesn't support embedding videos in a game. 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

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

Easy to use

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

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

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

Tends to crash or not compile games properly

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 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

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

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

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

Languages:GML (JavaScript-like)

Dev platforms:Windows, Linux, macOS, ARM

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

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

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289 106

score 247 · Answer 5

Corona SDK

Top Pro

Very simple to use

Top Con

Closed source

Since you don't have access to the code, you can't make changes to the SDK. You even have to implement workarounds on issues that have long been reported, but never fixed. See More

Top Pro

Free

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

Top Con

Free, but not completely

Such important plugins like AdMob cost $300 per year! 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 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

Lua syntax

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

Top Pro

Good documentation and lots of tutorials

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

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

Content scaling

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

Well supported

Specs

Price:Free; $99/yr to remove splash screen

Languages:Lua

Dev platforms:Windows; Macintosh

Desktop targets:Windows; Macintosh

See All Specs

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247 44

score 9 · Answer 6

ct.js

Top Pro

Beginner-friendly

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

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

No built-in particle system

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 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

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

Specs

Languages:JavaScript

Desktop targets:Windows, OSX, Linux

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9 0

score 141 · Answer 7

Stencyl

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

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

Cross-Platform

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

Haxe scripting available for advanced users

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

Top Con

Slow release cycle

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

Not a powerful engine

Should be used for basic games only. See More

Top Pro

Great performance on every platform

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

Top Con

Tile system is somewhat inflexible

Specs

License:Proprietary

Languages:Haxe

Dev platforms:Windows; Macintosh; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; Macintosh; Linux

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141 27

score 254 · Answer 8

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

OpenGL hardware acceleration

Top Con

Modest functionality

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

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 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

No external dependencies

Because it is based on Pyglet. See More

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

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

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

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

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 Pro

Great video tutorials

Hundreds of video tutorials available. See More

Specs

License:MIT

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

Dev platforms:Windows; macOS

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

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254 56

score 37 · Answer 9

GDevApp

Top Pro

Quickly add behaviors to objects

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

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)

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37 5

score 151 · Answer 10

pygame

Top Con

Very basic

Pretty much just a wrapper for SDL. See More

Top Pro

Easy Python syntax

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

Very easy to understand

The API is very straightforward. See More

Top Con

Deathly slow

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

Nonexistent community

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

Top Con

Hasn't been updated in years

Hasn't been updated in years. 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

Pygame is a language, not a game engine

Physics, AI, networking, and input are not supported. See More

Specs

License:LGPL

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151 23

score 17 · Answer 11

Ren'Py

Top Con

Not for every genre

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

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

17 4

score 78 · Answer 12

RPGMaker

Top Pro

Easy to jump into using an intuitive WYSIWYG editor

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

It's an open engine

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

Specs

Languages:JavaScript

Dev platforms:Windows, macOS

Desktop targets:Windows, macOS, Web

Mobile targets:Android, iOS

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78 19

score 325 · Answer 13

LÖVE

Top Pro

Active and very friendly community

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

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

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

The community seems juvenile

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

Uses hg to version-control, not git

If the source codes were controlled by git, it would be more convenient for more programmers to contribute to Love2d. Using hg on bitbucket resulted in loss of tons of users. 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

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

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

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 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 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

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 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 Pro

Many tutorials on the internet

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

Top Pro

Cute name

So much love. 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

Specs

License:zlib / libpng

Languages:Lua, C++

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

Desktop targets:Windows, OSX, Linux, HTML5 ( unofficially )

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325 71

score 298 · Answer 14

Clickteam Fusion 2.5

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Developers work so closely with the user base

Dedicated Bug tracking system linked to user forum for ease of access. See More

Top Con

Many extensions not available on non-Windows platforms

A lot of community-made extensions are only written for Windows, making it hard to port your game to other platforms. See More

Top Pro

Free version

A free version is available for download here. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Can also create Windows applications

CF allows creating Windows applications. Additionally, due to hundreds of available extensions, the process is quick. See More

Top Con

No native animator with curves, etc

Top 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. See More

Top Con

Poor native movements

The native non-physical movements are practically unusable if you don't want to use Box2D physics in your game. See More

Top Pro

Box2D physics engine included on all platforms

Clickteam Fusion 2.5 brings to you the box2D physics engine. See More

Top 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 See More

Top 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. See More

Top Con

No animation/object hierarchy

You need to position/rotate objects manually. See More

Top Pro

Upgrade discounts

If you buy Fusion 2.5, and later decide you want to upgrade to the Developer version, or in the case of moving from MMF2 to F2.5, the company offers upgrade discounts. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Not only is it the best, it is the original

This software has been around since 1994 (then called Klik & Play) and is still going very strong. Also, one of the founders of Clickteam was the developer of STOS BASIC and AMOS BASIC for the Atari ST and Amiga computers. See More

Top Con

Slow event system

Since the event system is interpreted, complex frames will start to slow down. This is also caused by poor code reuse, as usually, you need to copy+paste events with new conditions, making it impossible to cache intermediate results. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Con

Lack of native network multiplayer system, built-in database support, social media support

Top 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. See More

Top Con

Exporters are separate purchases, and they are not cheap

Top 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. See More

Top Con

No console/Linux exporters

Up to now, Clickteam has a console convert service. See More

Top Pro

Well-optimized

Runs well under high object numbers, particularly on PC and iOS thanks to hardware acceleration. See More

Top Con

Simpler than Scratch

Fusion 2.5 is more Simpler than MIT'S Scratch! See More

Top 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. See More

Top Con

The free edition is severely limited

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Exports native mobile code, making great performance games

Top Pro

Great for non-game apps, such as tools, utilities, multimedia projects, etc.

Top Pro

Great online store to get free and paid assets

Top Pro

Can create custom extensions

Top Pro

Visual (HLSL) effects

Top Pro

Great formula editor, which allows you to create complex maths and events with ease

Top Pro

Box2D physics engine

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

3D powerful solution

Specs

License:Proprietary

Languages:(Visual Editor)

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac

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298 85

score 9 · Answer 15

ENIGMA Development Environment

Top Pro

Raw C++ power and GML accessibility

Almost full support for GML, The ability to create and access C++ types, templates, and functions, compile DLLs and other C/C++ scripts See More

Top Con

A few bugs & glitches

Because Enigma is under very rapid development, with new functions added almost daily, some bugs and unexaplainable glitches can happen, though they also gets patched quickly. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Support for Windows, Mac and Linux. See More

Top Con

No code refactoring

Like any C++ based programs, the ability to refactor is limited. However, the new Ide for engima will support a few refactoring cababilities See More

Top Pro

Compatible with GameMaker

Enigma can support over 90% of gamemaker's GML language See More

Top Pro

Friendly user interface

besides the powerful combination between GML and C++, beginners can also use drag and dropping. See More

Top Pro

Free and Open Source

Top Pro

Faster than GameMaker

Written in C++, many features have been demonstrated running much faster than interpreted equivalents in GameMaker (up to 10-20 times faster than GM 8.1). See More

Top Pro

Under active development

Changes are made daily to add new functions/fixing bugs. See More

Top Pro

Helpful error messages

A full stack trace with available cores and memory information as well as operating system and Java version including file names and number is generated whenever an exception is encountered, with a handy link to submit the issue to GitHub. See More

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9 4

score 532 · Answer 16

Unreal Engine 4

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

Very high build size

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

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

Free development license, including source code

The engine, including full access to source code, is licensed to developers for 5% royalty on resulting revenue if it exceeds $3000 per quarter. 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

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

Hard engine for beginners

This engine not easy for beginners 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

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

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

Royalty based

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

Top Pro

Spectacular lighting visuals

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Especially when compared to its primary competitor, Unity. 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

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

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

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

Realistic graphics

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

AAA Ready

This is ready to make the next AAA game. 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

Quick release-cycle

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

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

They spend more time adding features than fixing existing ones

Top Pro

Proven track record

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

No coding experience needed

Top Con

Poor source control support

Merge tool is not working. See More

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

Frequent crashes

Often the editor crashes interrupting your work. See More

Top Con

Poor error messages

Top Con

Rarely works

Specs

Languages:C++, Blueprints (Visual Scripting)

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

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

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

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532 146

score 201 · Answer 17

AppGameKit 2.0

Top Pro

Instant testing on multiple devices at once

AppGameKit supports instant testing on all connected devices. With the push of a button you can run your game on any device connected to the development machine. See More

Top Con

Terrible scripting language

MS Basic from the 70's has more features. Procedural, no OO, inheritance, basic user defined types with overloading. Nothing. It even has GOSUB. See More

Top Pro

HTML5 support

The AppGameKit Basic can now export to HTML5. See More

Top Con

BASIC language

Even though it supports C++, it's mostly C++ mapped to BASIC without OOP. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Supports developing games for Android, iOS, PC, Mac, Linux and now HTML5. See More

Top Con

Can almost only do trivial games

The editor is rather limited, not fully polished, and 3D is missing some key functionalities (3D is work in progress). See More

Top Pro

Easy basic programming

Program in tier 1 BASIC programming for every 3D game need. See More

Top Con

$80 even if your game doesn't fly

Top Pro

Raspberry Pi free version available

A Raspberry Pi version is available and free. Users just need to register with the developer and then they can download. See More

Top Con

No builtin game mechanics, events, inventory.

Top Pro

Very fast compilation

It is a compilation based language, but the compilation is very fast. A project of about 1800 lines of code, for example, can compile almost instantly. (That's because it does not compile, it's an interpreter) See More

Top Con

Editor code completion is pretty bad

Top Pro

You only need to to pay for the license only

There is no charge for upgrades, or for extra platforms (the HTML5 version just appeared in the latest version), there are no subscription fees or other usage charges. If you publish onto either Apple or Google's stores you will have to pay their costs, of course, but the makers of AGK do not take a cut of this themselves. See More

Top Con

Pros on Slant are written by AGK marketing guys

Top Pro

Support

Informed, timely and intelligent feedback from the AGK forum. See More

Top Pro

Fast development

There are plenty of functions which facilitate development and deployment. For example, the AGK player immediately plays the updated bytecode on Android devices then the online site helps with building an APK file for Google Play Store in minutes. See More

Top Pro

Uses a powerful scripting language built for game development

Software produced with the App Game Kit is written in a language called AGK Script. This language has powerful inbuild commands including commands for 2D graphics, physics and networking. The commands make use of the platforms' native functions to improve performance. They are also designed to enhance code readability. The AGK Script commands have extensive online documentation. See More

Top Pro

C++ and Basic, you have the choice.

It runs fast with BASIC but if you want more you can use C++, it's also easy to use. See More

Top Pro

Can be used for advanced games programming in C++

Libraries which provide the same functionality are available for the five platforms, so you can code in C++ See More

Top Pro

Comes with an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

AGK comes with an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) based on the Code::Blocks IDE for writing AGK scripts. A key feature of the IDE is its ability to broadcast compiled programs to other devices for testing. See More

Top Pro

Excellent documentation

Every function is fully documented with examples and exercises. The Tutorial PDF is a full Introduction to 3D game programming with integrated references to every functionality and its most important usecases. The documentation is regulary updated. See More

Top Pro

Plugin support for Windows

Plug-ins can now be added to the Windows platform. Create your own Tier BASIC commands and call them using the AppGameKit Basic script language style. See More

Top Pro

Performance

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac, Linux, HTML5

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

3D:Yes

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201 66

score 56 · Answer 18

Scratch

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

Great starting point for kids

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

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

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 Pro

No need to be able to type

Top Pro

Can be used to create games

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

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56 29

Answer 19

Engine 001 Game Maker

Top Con

Windows only

The editor is Windows only, no OSX or Linux versions are planned. See More

Top Pro

Light weight

An amazing minimal download size at around 100mb. See More

Top Con

3D features may not be enough for some users

The 3D capabilities of the engine are a bit limited (for today standards), and some of the times you'll need to work around to create something. See More