What is the best alternative to&#x20;Blacksmith 2D?

Languages:C++, JavaScript

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

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

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

758 64

score 174 · Answer 3

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

PlayCanvas has an online editor that lets you build scenes and work with other people in your team in real-time. This is all done through the web browser without having to install any additional software. See More

174 22

score 72 · Answer 4

PlayCanvas

Top Pro

Real-time collaborative online editor tool

Top Con

Private projects are only available for premium users

The free tier does not support any private projects. Instead, all the code and assets will be hosted openly. While not a problem for open source games and for developers who intend to make an open source game, it can be a deal-breaker for teams who want to keep their code and assets private. See More

Top Pro

Powerful assets pipeline

Assets and content delivery is very different on a web platform comparing to native. So PlayCanvas challenges best practices to allow developers decide how their content is delivered and in what form. Async Assets download allows developers to load content as the app goes, instead of asking to download all assets in advance risking users to simply navigate away while staring at loading screens. Formats for 3D models and textures support covers all the popular tools. And the workflow is as simple as dragging and dropping your files right into the Assets Panel. The cloud will do the rest of the hard work optimizing and converting your files into runtime-friendly and compressed data. See More

Top Con

No collision offset

Top Pro

Rendering engine runs on the browser

Has an advanced WebGL renderer that runs in the browser. See More

Top Con

Not many tutorials

Top Pro

Avoids having to download lots of textures for lightmaps

Lightmaps are an efficient way to deliver lighting to your scenes for a long time. But they come with the cost of large textures. PlayCanvas offers a unique solution for a web platform, it renders lightmaps when an app is loading in runtime. This is faster than downloading MBs of textures. And it's much more convenient: simply switch your light sources to bake, and static models to be lightmapped, and the engine will do the rest. See More

Top Pro

Friendly and active community

PlayCanvas has Feed as homepage for registered users, listing Dev Logs of other developers. This allows to socialize with other developers like yourself in a twitter-like environment. More to that, there is also an active forum, where developers help each other to solve their challenges. Developers of PlayCanvas itself are always looking forward to chat and help the community with any problems that may arise. See More

Top Pro

Integrated physics engine

PlayCanvas lets users integrate physics in their game rather easily, using the powerful Bullet Physics Engine (ammo.js). Should also be noted that the physics engine is delivered as an optional library, so by default being disabled it does not add any extra download size to your apps. See More

Top Pro

Has a free tier

Engine is free for projects under 200MB and with no more than 2 people on a team. The free tier has no engine restrictions. Tools are totally free too. There are no special limiting features behind any paywalls, and free users have all the features as paid users. There are no royalties associated with publishing your apps and games - you've made them, you own them. It is free to publish to playcanvas.com as well, just by one click in Editor. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform support

PlayCanvas lets you build games that run in mobile, desktop browsers, and native mobile apps. PlayCanvas can even make games that can run inside mobile social media and instant messenger clients like Twitter and WhatsApp. See More

Top Pro

Small app size

The engine itself weighs just under 150Kb, and it's always challenged to stay small. There is no extra weight that has to be carried with your app, just your assets and scripts in a runtime-friendly compressed form. This allows users to engage with your content in matter of seconds, and even just under a second on a good connection. See More

Top Pro

Open source

PlayCanvas is fully open source and is under active development. See More

Top Pro

Very easy to use

Top Pro

Loads extremely fast

Top Pro

Has hot code reloading

Real-time link between your launched app and the editor allows the developer to preview and play with their scene without needing to refresh the game after every change in the code to see the updated result. See More

Specs

Price:Free to Use & Open Source

Supported platforms:Any Browser on Windows, MacOS, and Linux

Dev platforms:Windows, Linux, MacOS

Mobile targets:Android, iOS

Support for iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows (both OpenGL and DirectX), Windows 8 Store, Windows Phone 8, PlayStation Mobile, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and the OUYA console with even more platforms on the way. See More

72 12

score 135 · Answer 5

MonoGame

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Top Con

Slow rate of updates

Versions 3.9 is overdue by a year, and version 4.0 is set to release in 2040. See More

Top Pro

Open source

All the code is available to you ensuring you'll have the ability to make changes when you need to or even port to whole new platforms. See More

Top Con

Non-Windows tools are a bit funky

Monogame support for Xamarin Studio or Monodevelop is a bit shaky especially for library references. Only good non-Windows IDE compatible with MonoGame is Rider and that costs money & isn't open-source. See More

Top Pro

Well-known and documented API

The framework implements the XNA 4 API, so games made in XNA can be ported to other platforms using this. This was the same API used by the Xbox Live Indie Games platform so there's lots of documentation online for it. See More

Top Pro

Managed code

By leveraging C# and other .NET languages on Microsoft and Mono platforms you can write modern, fast, and reliable game code. See More

Top Pro

Good community

The community MonoGame has to offer is helpful and mature. See More

Top Pro

Performance on desktop

The performance on desktop platforms matches that of C++, but you still get all the pleasant features that C# has to offer. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Languages:C#

Mobile targets:Android, IOS, Windows phone

Pixi is a WebGL renderer, but can fall back to canvas if WebGL is not supported or turned off. See More

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score 47 · Answer 6

Pixi.js

Top Pro

Supports WebGL w/ canvas fallback

Top Con

Not a complete solution

Pixi only provides the renderer. See More

Top Pro

Will be familiar to ActionScript developers

Pixi.js uses a code structure that's very similar to ActionScript. See More

47 12

score 345 · Answer 7

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)

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

345 61

score 2148 · Answer 8

Godot

Top Pro

Fully dedicated 2D engine, no hacks

Top Con

Primarily supports own language (GD Script)

Although C# is also supported by Godot, it is only supported by a separate version, and Mono must be downloaded separately. While GDScript is 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

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

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

Annoying minor bugs

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

GDScript is quite immature language

GDScript is copy of python and the real problem is, it is not python. Which means it cannot have all the power and new features that is available in Python or other programming language. It does have some good features but it is not good enough for what you need if you want to deep dive into game development. You can just feel that by the godot team is solving that matter by supporting mono version. Because C# is popular in other game engine and it contains all the new features that is available from new programming language. If i give you very simple example for why GDScript is immature, GDScript does not support asynchronous programming. Which is very efficient for performance of your game. You may mention about multi-threading because asynchronous programming is one way of multi-threading. However If you try that in Godot, you cannot multi-threading where you want to implement asynchronous system. For example, Autoload (Fake singleton) where you want to manage data in real time. Autoload is not real singleton. It is not a separated thread that manage data. Therefore everything is synchronous in autoload. Even though you create new thread from Autoload script, your game will just stop and wait for your thread to finish its task... 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

Godot 3/4 split

The recent release of Godot 4 brings new features, but isn't yet fully documented, and performance may not be as optimized. 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

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

It's hard to learn

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 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

The list of supported languages is growing

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

Integrated animation editor

Every property can be animated. 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

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

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

NoAdmob or other AdNetwork support

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

Many buggy and half-finished features

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 Con

Hard for a Unity user

Coming from a Unity background, Godot engine is hard. 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

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

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

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

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

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 (Godot 3)

It has a great visual scripting tool. It's a great choice if you don't like to code. This was however removed in Godot 4, so you will need to use the (still supported) Godot 3 branch for visual scripting. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Android

Popular Language Bindings:GDScript, C#, C++

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

2148 325

score 24 · Answer 9

TIC-80

Top Pro

All tools in one place

Top Pro

Free

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

Top Pro

Retro-styled and restricted environment

Pixelated Software with a good retro style. 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

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

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

24 0

score 566 · Answer 10

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+

2D game creation was a major feature request from the Unity community and was added with version 4.3. 2D is provided in both the Pro and Free distribution of Unity. See More

566 150

score 660 · Answer 11

Unity 2D

Top Pro

Built into Unity 4.3+

Top Con

Lacks critical features

Vertices can't be animated, so you can't have ANY organic feel (like... lungs breathing). Parent bone can't be animated without affecting the children. This is especially impeding for organic feel, again. No option to show & unshow assets (or it is hidden), like for switching weapon on your character for exemple. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with Mecanim

Mecanim brings state machines and blending to 2D bone animation. The state machine editor allows for designers and programmers to visually create a Finite State Machine (FSM) to control when animations should play. Mecanim also allows for blending so an animation can transition smoothly between two states without the need of in between frames made by an animator. See More

Top Con

Poor script interface for texture atlases

Accessing individual sprites within an atlas texture is possible at runtime, but requires use of the Resources folder subsystem. See More

Top Pro

Sprite Sheet and Bone based animation supported

Both types of 2D animation for game development are supported in Unity’s system and can be used interchangeably in the timeline. See More

Top Pro

Easily change sprites dynamically

Usually used for character customization, programmers can change any sprite in a bone animation at runtime easily by referencing the bone and loading the new sprite from the resources folder. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Languages:C#

The AppGameKit Basic can now export to HTML5. See More

660 172

score 239 · Answer 12

AppGameKit 2.0

Top Pro

HTML5 support

Top Con

Restrictive virtual buttons

"AppGameKit" does not grant editing the very basic parameters of virtual buttons such as font and text size. The only method some people suggest is to use an image for every single "button". See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

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

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

BASIC language

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

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

No builtin game mechanics, events, inventory.

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 Con

$80 even if your game doesn't fly

Top Pro

Easy basic programming

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

Top Con

Editor code completion is pretty bad

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

Pros on Slant are written by AGK marketing guys

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 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

Performance

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac, Linux, HTML5

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

3D:Yes

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

239 74

score 21 · Answer 13

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

Languages:JavaScript, TypeScript, CoffeeScript

Dev platforms:Windows, OSX, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, OSX, Linux, HTML5

Very good for begginers who are looking for game FRAMEWORKS. See More

21 0

score 18 · Answer 14

raylib

Top Pro

Simple

Top Con

Just coding

Lack of an interface, visual help or auto-debugging could make it difficult to use for a complete beginner. See More

Top Pro

Support forum

Though it's a small project, it has a forum on the webpage with helpful content available. See More

18 0

score 14 · Answer 15

Ebitengine

Top Pro

Simple

One of the core focuses of Ebitengine is to be simple. The screen is just treated as another image that can be drawn to. See More

Top Con

Bare-bones

For example, Ebitengine does not have a physics engine; instead games must rely on a separate implementation such as Chipmunk2D. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Many platforms are supported, including WebAssembly. See More

Specs

License:Apache License 2.0

Price:Free

Languages:Go

Dev platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD

Just check the commit frequency on github :) https://github.com/vchelaru/FlatRedBall/commits/master Plus Victor takes community input seriously and is known to shift around priorities based on the pressing needs of the community See More

14 0

score 33 · Answer 16

FlatRedBall

Top Pro

Continually improving and open source

Top Con

The editor's UI looks dated

Although functional, doesn't look as flashy as Unity for example, which may put some people off. See More

Top Pro

Very easy to use

Simplifies routine tasks such as adding entities and files to the game, or tuning parameters, via the FRB Editor called Glue See More

Top Pro

Great community

Very active chat on gitter: https://gitter.im/vchelaru/FlatRedBall Victor (the creator of the engine) is available throughout the day to answer questions and solve any problems that may arise, along with the rest of the community members who are ready to assist in any way they can. See More

Top Pro

Extensive documentation

http://flatredball.com/documentation/ Very good documentation not only regarding the API details, but also lots of tutorials covering different aspects of using FRB, either on the code-side or on using any of its tools. See More

Specs

Price:Free

Languages:c#

Dev platforms:Windows

BYOND is in active development and updates are released constantly. See More

33 2

score 41 · Answer 17

BYOND

Top Pro

In active development

Top Con

Highly supports multiplayer, but can make solo games ready for download.

Top Pro

Easy to use

The software itself is very easy to learn and use for beginners. See More

Top Con

Exclusive programming language

The language is known as DM, and is modified using Dream Maker. It is an object oriented, interpreted language, which closely resembles C++, Java and PHP. More information available in the DM Guide. See More

Top Pro

Helpful community

BYOND's community is relatively large and extremely helpful. Any question a beginner or an experienced user may have is quickly answered. See More

Top Pro

Large Community

Fairly large player base and multiple games to play. See More

Specs

License:Proprietary

Price:Free to use. Free to publish your games.

Languages:DM

Dev platforms:Windows

Over the last updates, many useful features have been removed, making it harder to create more complex games. See More

41 3

score 12 · Answer 18

Modd.io

Top Con

The engine is evolving in a bad way

Top Pro

Its Fun, its easy to script

k See More

Top Con

Not very secure

Modd.io comes with its own security issues. Many of them have been used to destroy eachother's games, which completely busts your progress on your game unless you have backed it up by exporting it's JSON. See More

Top Pro

Runs well on low-end devices

The game client doesn't use much CPU nor bandwidth. See More

Top Con

Not Possible for stuff

k See More

Top Pro

Free

By far, this engine is completely free to use. See More

Top Con

Annoying asset size limit

Each asset is limited to 800kb (except for audio being 3mb) which is okay for simple assets but unacceptable for creating spritesheets for animations or tilesheets for the map. See More

Top Pro

No installation required - super easy to get started

Modd.io runs in browser, it provides IDE, map editor, and asset manager all in one platform, so you don't need to download or setup anything. See More

Top Con

Very flat map

No matter how well game maps are made, all of them look just not beautiful. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use free Asset Library

You can easily change your game assets (images, sound, etc) with a single click using modd.io Asset Library See More

Top Con

No/limited camera manipulation

You cannot create a shake effect which is also urgently needed in complex game creation. See More

Top Pro

Has multiplayer support baked in

This engine supports up to 64 concurrent players, and hosts servers for you as well See More

Top Con

Certain variable datatypes are urgently needed but do not exist.

Such datatypes as arrays composed of numbers, strings, etc are needed to create complex games but just do not exist in this game engine. See More

Top Pro

Perfect for Impatient game developers

It literally takes 5 minutes from signup to publishing my game See More

Top Con

Joke-y community

Most of the staff team in the community are constantly behaving like jokers. It just always feels like 80% of the staff team is not the right pick for such a community. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Modd.io is designed for new/intermediate developers who wants to get into game development. You should be comfortable using the engine after spending about 15 minutes in watching tutorial videos See More

Top Con

The homepage is not good

The homepage allows players to join your game, but the way it works is just not good. The "unpopular 0 player" games get less exposure than the popular games. The tier system also puts a star on your game card which also lures players to your game making them think this game has a special event or something, giving a disadvantage to the less popular games which are still so called "Tier 1". See More

Top Con

Not very powerful

This engine is ready to use right away, but already starts dropping framerate at over 1000 units which are not very active. See More

Top Con

Tier-based servers with certain lockdowns

Modd.io "tiers" all the games you create. The very basic tier, commonly called "Tier 1" is very limited and removes motivation to develop a game. See More

Top Con

You'll have to learn a new programming language

This engine has it's own IDE with a drag and drop style programming language. It does take a good 2 hours to get familiar with the API.. See More

Top Con

No lower level API access

You cannot access lower-level APIs through this engine, such as the renderer. See More

Top Con

No single player support

All games in modd.io must support multi-player game mode. See More

Top Con

Limited customizability

Modd.io is designed to be good at making "specific" kind of multiplayer games. Its strength unleashes if you don't care too much about the specifics in UI. For example, if you wanted to make a casual death match game, it is extremely easy to make it using modd.io. However, if you want to create a puzzle game with a unique UI, it becomes very time consuming. See More

Top Con

No 3D support

This engine is limited to 2D only. See More

Haxe is a powerful, cross-platform and open source language. See More

12 1

score 131 · Answer 19

HaxeFlixel

Top Pro

Powerful language

Top Con

Small community

HaxeFlixel devs are not as large as (example) Unity devs, so the amount of support and exposure is limited. See More

Top Pro

75+ demos

All demos have included GitHub link, so you can learn from the examples See More

Top Pro

Getting started guide

Has a starting guide for people who are completely new to HaxeFlixel; from installing Haxe to a beginner-friendly HaxeFlixel tutorial. See More

Top Pro

Uses Haxe

(excerpt from source): To help you do this, the (Haxe) toolkit contains three main components: the Haxe Language - a modern high-level, strictly typed programming language the Haxe Standard Library - a complete cross-platform standard library the Haxe Compiler - an incredibly fast cross-compiler See More

Top Pro

Fully free

HaxeFlixel is fully free and open source. See More

Top Pro

Hardware accelerated rendering on native platforms

Top Pro

Active development community

(excerpt from source): There is a multitude of channels to interact with the community: Our google groups forums #haxeflixel on IRC (freenode.net) @HaxeFlixel on Twitter The HaxeFlixel organization on GitHub The HaxeFlixel page on IndieDB Join our development chat on Slack[1] HaxeFlixel group on Steam See More

Top Pro

Powerful debugger overlay

You can watch variables, log (trace) messages, and check for memory/frame rate performance. See More

Top Pro

Modelled after Flixel

But with considerable improvements -- the HaxeFlixel team are constantly working improving and fixing the HaxeFlixel API, as compared to the original Flixel which is no longer updated. See More

Top Pro

Easy 2D game development

(Haxe)Flixel does a lot of things for you like tilemaps and collision detection, which makes it super easy to create 2D games. See More

Top Pro

Outstanding community

The HaxeFlixel team and contributors are very active on Github and other community places (like Slack), and are usually able to respond to your questions within a day or two. See More

Top Pro

Similar syntax to Actionscript 3

Haxe's syntax is similar to AS3, so Flash developers can transition to HaxeFlixel if they are familiar with AS3/Flixel. See More

Top Pro

Excellent, robust API

The API has all of the features that you'd expect from a powerful engine without sacrificing organization and flexibility See More

Top Pro

Cross Platform

The open source Flash API is powered by OpenFL, which allows you to compile to Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and even major consoles (coming soon). See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform IDE environment

On Windows, the IDE of choice is FlashDevelop, but if you're looking for cross-platform IDE (Windows/Mac/Linux), there's Sublime Text which includes a package for Haxe syntax highlighting, as well as auto-completion. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Linux; OSX; Windows

Languages:Haxe

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux; Flash; HTML5

Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine. See More

131 9

score 118 · Answer 20

Adventure Game Studio

Top Pro

Easy to learn tool

Top Con

Natively supports only 2D

2D only native support, 3D could be supported with plugins though. See More

Top Pro

Completely free and open source

AGS is licensed under Artistic License 2.0 and is completely free for use for creating both freeware and commercial games. See More

Top Con

Uses dated tech

Engine is based on the old technologies, which impose number of limitations and may cause problems on latest systems (level of annoyance varies depending on your priorities). See More

Top Pro

Relatively well documented

Besides the manual there are multiple text and video tutorials and code samples written by community. See More

Top Con

Graphics renderer is a bit dated

Graphics renderer is not well optimized for high-resolution games and complex effects. See More

Top Pro

Used for a number of high-profile commercial releases

Adventure Game Studio has been used to develop games such as "Resonance", "Blackwell" series, "Gemini Rue", "Primordia". See More

Top Con

No visual editor for scripts

You have to actually write all scripts yourself. See More

Top Pro

Lots of assets available

An extensive library of game templates and script modules accumulated over years. You can construct a simple game in hours (if you know what you are doing). See More

Top Con

Development is slow

Further development of the engine is currently slow, done by only few people in their free time. See More

Top Pro

Friendly community

An old, big and active community which would support newcomers not only in learning basics of the engine, but can help with every aspect of game making (including art, voice acting, moral support, etc). See More

Top Con

AGS Script isn't as full-featured as other scripting languages

Its own scripting language has lower syntax capabilities compared to modern script languages. See More

Top Con

Assets cover almost exclusively adventure/quest genre

The features, script functions and game templates are very biased towards adventure/quest genre. The non-adventure games were made in AGS (2D shooters, platformers, turn-based strategies), but their development usually requires to write everything from scratch. See More

Top Con

Workflow is closely coupled with the editor

Workflow is very tied to the editor and custom file formats, which can cause problems for bigger, more professional projects (interfering with source control, parallel development, automated builds, etc) See More

Specs

License:Artistic License 2.0

Languages:AGS Script

Dev platforms:Windows

Desktop targets:Windows; Linux