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

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

470 125

score 21 · Answer 2

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

License:MIT

Languages:JavaScript, TypeScript, CoffeeScript

Dev platforms:Windows, OSX, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, OSX, Linux, HTML5

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

21 0

score 41 · Answer 3

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

The basics are very easy to grasp, and you can have a basic story up in minutes. See More

41 3

score 54 · Answer 4

Twine

Top Pro

Easy to understand

Top Con

Limited to interactive fiction

Twine is specialized to decision-based interactive fiction. Under the hood, a Twine game is just a flowchart for page transitions; the only way to add more complex behavior is to code it from scratch in JavaScript. See More

Top Pro

Free for commercial projects

Twine is based on a GPL licence. You are free to download, modify and publish derivatives - even commercially. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Web

54 7

score 43 · Answer 5

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)

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

43 7

score 758 · Answer 6

GDevelop

Top Pro

Easy to use

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

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

GUI is slow to load

This makes doing the simplest things, like looking at one of your maps, hard to do. In looking into this program, it can stall a PC while trying to load a sample map. 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

No 3d, not even fake 3d

This is a 100$ 2d-only game engine. You could of course use pre-rendered 3d graphics, but your games themselves will exist only in the x and y axes. 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

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 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

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 Con

Optional subscription not mentioned on main site

While the engine is free and open source as stated on the main website, it does not mention that some optional features and services are actually activated through a paid subscription (two tiers: 2€ and 7€). Those features are: no nag screen shown when debugging, additional metrics available on games dashboard, access to more than 2 cloud exports per day (unlimited local export can be done without subscription, provided the right packaging tools are installed and configured), easy removal of GDevelop splash screen (can be done manually without subscription). 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 Con

Behaviors 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

Constant updates

New releases and bug fixes are consistent. New updates are released anywhere within 2 weeks or 1 month from the last one. Its auto-updater also does it job very well making life a lot easier. See More

Top Pro

Online version available, compatible with iOS and Android

Thanks to its open source nature, GDevelop-App.com was built over the GDevelop engine. GDevelop-App.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 GDevelop-App and export it to open it inside GDevelop. See More

Top Pro

Multilanguage support

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

Specs

License:MIT

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 7

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

You'll need to put more time in learning Unity + Playmaker compared to something like GameSalad. But once get the hang of it and familiarize yourself with what it's possible to build with them, it's quite easy to use. See More

174 22

score 53 · Answer 8

PlayMaker + Unity3D

Top Pro

Easy to use

Top Con

Comparatively high learning curve

Although C#, JavaScript, and Boo have extensive documentation available online, it could still be difficult to wrap your head around the library and Unity's component based system. See More

Top Pro

Provides access to a huge list of assets through Asset Store

For those developers who can't afford an artist, or aren't skilled enough to create their own art, Unity features an Asset Store full of a wide variety of free and paid assets that can be easily added to your game. The Asset Store has more than just music and art. It also has code and modules that can be added to your game such as unique lighting or GUI systems. See More

Top Con

Limited tutorials

There are not a lot videos with Playmaker tutorials. Official text tutorials are also quite limited. Even not every action has a description on an official wiki. See More

Top Pro

Third party plugins support

A lot of third party plugins have support for Playmaker. Playmaker team also invest time to add support for a lot of third party plugins. See More

Top Con

Performance could be better for 2D

Performance can be a real issue with 2D games. Unity 3D is actually a 3D game engine, and drags a lot of overhead with it. For mobile, one could never achieve the performance of more specialized 2D engines with Unity3D. See More

Top Pro

Elegant state-based visual scripting

Instead of a single "if this then that" event list which can become very cluttered beyond the most basic behaviors, PlayMaker gives each object a list of states where only certain events are triggered, and performing an action also changes state. This allows for a clean, simple visual representation which helps break complex logical structures into smaller pieces, making them easier to understand. See More

Top Pro

Powerful

It basically can do same things as scripting in Unity. See More

Specs

Languages:C#; UnityScript; Boo;JavaScript

Mobile targets:iOS; Android; Windows Phone 8; Blackberry

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

53 10

score 394 · Answer 9

Solar 2D (formerly Corona SDK)

Top Pro

Very simple to use

Top Con

Free, but not completely

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

Making a device build requires internet connection

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

Top Pro

Corona Simulator

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

Top Pro

Good documentation and lots of tutorials

Top Pro

Content scaling

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

Top Pro

Live builds - update builds running on a device automatically

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

Top Pro

Lua syntax

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

Top Pro

Very comprehensive API

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

Top Pro

Amazing learning curve

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

Top Pro

Cross-platform desktop and mobile

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

Top Pro

Marketplace for 3rd party plug-ins

Top Pro

Great community

Top Pro

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

Top Pro

Completely free

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

Top Pro

Open Source

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

Top Pro

Well supported

Specs

Price:Free

Languages:Lua

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

394 50

score 263 · Answer 10

Stencyl

Top Pro

Haxe scripting available for advanced users

Top Con

Not a powerful engine

Should be used for basic games only. See More

Top Pro

No coding required, great drag & drop interface

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

Top Con

Only available via subscription

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

Top Pro

Cross-Platform

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

Top Con

Slow release cycle

Top Pro

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

Top Con

Updated

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

Top Pro

The original concept for Ghost Song was created using Stencyl

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

Top Con

Tile system is somewhat inflexible

Top Pro

Great performance on every platform

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

Specs

License:Proprietary (editor), MIT (engine)

Languages:Java (editor), Haxe (engine)

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

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

It is almost like talking with Unity naturally. Actions in Unity can be coded using regular English more-so than with other game engines, which makes it much easier for beginners. See More

263 37

score 8 · Answer 11

GameFlow + Unity

Top Pro

Adds an abstraction layer that helps create the game logic

Top Con

The documentation is not very extensive

The documentation for GameFlow could use some work. It's not very extensive and it hardly covers everything needed to know to build a game. See More

Top Pro

None of boxes and arrows, perfectly integrated into the workflow of Unity

Almost all visual scripting solutions for Unity are based on nodes, boxes and arrows, GameFlow changes this way of working incorporating actions blocks and actions using drag and drop. See More

Top Con

Performance could be better for 2D

Performance can be a real issue with 2D games. Unity 3D is actually a 3D game engine, and drags a lot of overhead with it. For mobile, one could never achieve the performance of more specialized 2D engines with Unity3D. See More

Top Pro

Excellent product

The developer supports the users quickly and with detailed responses. He is knowledgeable on the Unity API as well as developing videogames. See More

Top Pro

Integrated in the Unity inspector

No windows apart, work with GameFlow from the own Unity inspector See More

Top Pro

Can achieve in minutes what would take hours with classical scripting

Due to its innovative block system and without follow tutorials or look documentation will be able to create actions within five minutes in Unity. See More

Top Pro

An effective advanced prototyping and scripting tool

GameFlow allows to complete a videogame in half an hour. See More

uScript's nodes are a visual representation of actual code blocks, and it takes advantage of C#'s reflection capabilities to automatically create nodes for any scripts it finds in your project, regardless of the source. This makes it inherently compatible with pretty much everything. Custom nodes can also be created by hand, for cases where the automatically created ones contain more elements than they actually need. See More

8 2

score 8 · Answer 12

uScript + Unity3D

Top Pro

Automatically generates nodes for third-party script assets

Top Con

Not that easy to use

It's a lot more complicated compared to something like Playmaker. Same tasks take a lot more time. See More

Top Pro

Versatile flow diagram script model

Modeled after UDK's Kismet (the predecessor to UE4's Blueprint), uScript's 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. See More

Top Pro

Generates C# source code

Nodes are translated directly to C# files in your project. This is great for learning to code, and also for advanced users who can use uScript for fast prototyping and then further optimize the scripts if necessary. See More

Specs

Languages:C#; UnityScript; Boo

Dev platforms:Windows; Mac

Mobile targets:iOS; Android; Windows Phone 8; Blackberry

There is no scene zoom, search boxes, or snap to grid. There is also no ability to focus view on the actor or use folders for file structure. See More

8 2

score 65 · Answer 13

GameSalad

Top Con

Bad editor

Top Pro

Cross-Platform

Top Con

Expensive compare with others

There is no free version any more and it is very expensive compared with other engines. See More

Top Pro

No-code editor

Top Con

Poor editor performance

Especially when you're working on a big project. See More

Top Pro

Has a Windows(.exe) version on par with Mac

The Windows version is now upto date with all the features of its Mac sibling. See More

Top Con

No scripting language or SDK

If a needed behavior is not supplied by GameSalad, there's no way to add it. See More

Top Pro

Multiple publishing platforms

Can create and publish games for iOS, Macintosh desktop and laptop computers, Android, Kindle, Amazon FireTV and FireTV Stick, Windows 8 and Tizen devices. See More

Top Con

Product is suffering - Lacking company leadership and no voice from corporate

Some customers are currently in a holding pattern from the lack of support and messaging from GS corporate. GS is currently unstable and developers are waiting for another update that has been going on from 2015. No word or message from GS corporate about timeframes or deliverables. You can read the ongoing discussion here. See More

Top Pro

Gamepad support

Gamepad support is available as of 0.13.3. See More

Top Con

Product is in Limbo - company is lacking developers

Top Pro

Free standalone viewer app allows instant, live mobile device testing

The GameSalad Viewer is a free app available for iOS, Android and Kindle. Once installed on your mobile devices, you can deploy and test your GameSalad games live on any mobile device running the Viewer that is on the same local network as your dev computer. This even allows Windows users to test their games on iOS devices without a Mac device and without any complicated code signing or provisioning profiles. And, you can even take your games with you -- once loaded onto your mobile device, a history option caches recent games on your device without any connection to the dev computer. See More

Top Con

Doesn't support Windows platform (*.exe)

Doesn't support Windows platform (*.exe) See More

Top Pro

Allows you to focus on the logic rather than code

Since the user mainly uses menu options there is very little code needed to be keyed in. This makes the code very easy to read and understand. Hence there are many help videos on youtube See More

Top Pro

Extensive community of seasoned professionals for support

Extensive community of seasoned professionals in all disciplines (graphics, game design, animation, physics, music, video production, marketing, etc.) producing tutorials, videos, publishing tips, free templates and who are willing to answer forum questions and help newcomers. See More

Top Pro

Powerful expression editor and functions

Allows you to create expressions on par with LUA (it's back end-language). See More

Top Pro

Custom collision shapes with JSON support

Allows you to import JSON data for custom collision shapes to use with Gamesalad's implementation of Box2d physics. See More

Top Pro

Easy to publish

Software prepares your app so you can just send it to Apple. All my games are reviewed with no problems. See More

Top Pro

Drag and drop editor

The drag and drop editor makes GameSalad very easy to use, no programming experience needed. See More

Top Pro

Great engine

Very quick to learn and great for making games. Community is very open and helpful. See More

Specs

Languages:none

Desktop targets:Windows 8; Macintosh

Mobile targets:iOS; Android; Tizen

Blender is licensed under the GPL. Some Blender modules such as the Cycles rendering engine are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. See More

65 14

score 663 · Answer 14

Blender

Top Pro

Free and open source

Top Con

Too many possibilities, no unified workflow

The operations are not optimized enough for specific tasks. See More

Top Pro

Wide import and export format support

Support lots of modern 3D formats including DAE and FBX - ideal for game developers. See More

Top Con

The physics engine is a bit lagging behind, especially the destruction physics

Top Pro

Has a powerful rendering engine

Blender runs the Cycles path tracing engine under the hood. Cycles is a very powerful rendering engine capable of full path tracing (light fall off, caustics, volumetrics). It is mostly compatible with OpenCL and CUDA rendering, and is implementing mycropolygon displacement features. The upcoming release has a viewport engine called EEVEE whereby you can see and interact with your work in render mode in real time! See More

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

Blender has a history of being unintuitive, but the 2.8 overhaul made the program far easier for beginners to pick up, and changes continue to be made to further improve the experience. However, there is still a learning curve. See More

Top Pro

Python extensibility

Blender embeds Python 3, which can be used to write add-ons, tools, extend the interface, rig characters and automate tasks. See More

Top Con

Not good for Industrial Design because it uses average vertex normals

You can not create a hard surface with a radius continuity degree along a surface using a specific radius value. See More

Top Pro

Powerful animation suite

Blender provides a full rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions. See More

Top Con

Vertex normal issues on edges after boolean operations.

After creating a simple boolean operation the vertex normals are broken. A lot of work to fix the issue and you loos surface continuity. See More

Top Pro

Supports both low-poly and hi-poly modeling

Top Con

Bad vertex normal after boolean operations

Does not handle well polygon intersections. And need tweaking by hand points or adding average vertex normals via modifiers. See More

Top Pro

Regular release schedule

Releases are made every ~3 months. See More

Top Con

Does not handle NURBs

Is not capable of real hard surface for industrial design because is not able to reproduce surface continuity degree as a NURBs does and average vertex normal destroy surface radius. See More

Top Pro

Sculpting and 3D painting features

Although Blender's 3d painting and sculpting tools (mostly painting) are not at par with specialized software like Substance Painter, ZBrush, or Mari, it is more than capable of getting most jobs done if the user takes the time to learn and understand it. See More

Top Con

Poor particle system

The Blender particle system can at times be a little limiting and finicky (and buggy) to get working. Even if it can get most straight forward jobs done, it is far from the most advanced system, and could benefit largely from advancements. See More

Top Pro

Includes video editing & compositing tools

Blender's node-based compositor has comprehensive video sequencing and post-processing features. See More

Top Pro

Node based modeling support

Top Pro

Keyboard shortcuts

Good keyboard shortcuts for everything. Keep your left hand on the keyboard and your right hand on the mouse. See More

Top Pro

Very useful for a freelancer

It offers a round solution (it covers many areas and professional fields) for a freelancer, for free, constantly updated, very polished, and allowing high quality results that clients do require. After some learning, it becomes very useful for professional work. See More

Top Pro

Has a large community

There's a huge community to help you get started immediately. See More

Top Pro

Coherent and streamlined workflow / internal use logic

The trick with Blender is to get used to its usage philosophy, as it keeps consistent through all the application. Once you get it, every feature or addition is learnt naturally, almost effortlessly. See More

Top Pro

Very versatile

You don't have to switch between software when you want to do different things. Because modeling, sculpting, composting, video editing etc can all be done in blender. See More

Top Pro

Generative geometry using nodes

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD

663 95

score 30 · Answer 15

Construct 3

Top Pro

Runs in the browser

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

Top Con

Subscription based

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

Top Pro

Fast and small

Construct 3 loads really fast. See More

Top Pro

Timeline

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

Top Pro

No installation required

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

Top Pro

Works on Chromebooks

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

30 8

score 345 · Answer 16

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

License:MIT

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

Dev platforms:Windows; macOS

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

Includes easy to use 3D editor for quickly clicking together 3D games. See More

345 61

score 55 · Answer 17

CopperCube

Top Pro

Allows creating 3D apps and games without programming

Top Pro

Good 3D editor

Top Pro

Native WebGL support

Can create 3D games as real WebGL apps, running inside websites. Doesn't use a cross compiler, so WebGL apps are small and download quickly. See More

Top Pro

Good terrain editor

CopperCube includes a terrain editor. Terrain can be drawn with height painting tools directly in the editor, textures can be painted quickly with automatic texture blending into the terrain. There are also tools for placing grass and bushes, and for distributing meshes automatically over the terrain. See More

Top Pro

Available on Steam

CopperCube is available on Steam It was Greenlit. See More

Top Pro

Exports to irrlicht

It was also written by the founder of irrlicht, although it is not open source. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn and to use

Top Pro

Fast prototyping

You can quickly develop an experimental working model of the product (prototype), because the engine gives you access to a lot of prefabs, plugins and settings. And, you can use the visual programming to speed up the process, even if later you have to write code in order to improve the final product. See More

Top Pro

Oculus Rift support

Supports both DK2 and DK1. See More

Specs

Supported languages:Javascript; ActionScript 3

Mobile targets:Android

Leadwerks's flowgraphs 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. See More

55 14

score 31 · Answer 18

Leadwerks Game Engine

Top Pro

Versatile flow diagram script model

Top Con

Very buggy

Leadworks is a not complete, it's a work in progress. As such many parts of the engine are clunky, especially the level editor. See More

Top Pro

Built-in level editor

Has an acceptable 3D map editor that is easy to use. See More

Top Con

Documentation and support are limited for non-coders

The flowgraph editor can be used with free script assets to build games without writing any code, but this is not directly intended or encouraged by Leadwerks. See More

Top Pro

Handful of Prefabs and Scripts

For example, you take a model (e.g. torch), add a light source to it, add a particle generator (for fire) and save it as a prefab (one file). Then this prefab can be used to add many torches with fire and light. See More

Top Con

Highly misleading advertising

Specs

Languages:C++; Lua

Dev platforms:Windows; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; Linux

Mobile targets:none

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

31 9

score 2148 · Answer 19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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++

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

2148 325

score 366 · Answer 20

Clickteam Fusion 2.5

Top Pro

Permissive runtime license agreement

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is very expensive

100$ to $400. 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 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

Free version

A free version is available for download here. See More

Top Con

No native animator with curves, etc

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exporters are separate purchases, and they are not cheap

Top Pro

Well-optimized

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

Top Con

No console/Linux exporters

Up to now, Clickteam has a console convert service. 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

Simpler than Scratch

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

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 Con

The free edition is severely limited

Top Pro

Exports native mobile code, making great performance games

Top Pro

Great for non-game apps

Such as tools, utilities, multimedia projects, etc. See More

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:c

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac