Recs.
Updated
Monkey is a next-generation games programming language that allows you to create apps on multiple platforms with the greatest of ease. It works by translating Monkey code to one of a different number of languages at compile time - including C++, C#, Java, Javascript and Actionscript.
Specs
Pros
Pro Partly open-source
The entirety of the base-language itself is open source. Commercial modules such as Mojo for non-free platforms cost a one-time fee. Though Mojo is not free for all targets, the targets for these platforms are, meaning it is possible to implement other frameworks for these targets.
The Desktop (GLFW and C++ based) and HTML5 implementations of Mojo are currently free and open source.
The language's development is completely public, and is managed via GitHub.
Pro Many community modules available
The community has created essential modules:
- Spine for animations
- Box2D and Chipmunk for physics
- Game frameworks such as Ignition, fantomEngine, and Flixel
- Diddy for lots of extra functionality
- FontMachine for custom bitmap fonts
- MiniB3D for 3D gaming
- And several others...
Pro Native module support
You are not restricted only to the modules you get from the official release. You can build your own stuff. Even build your own "app" module. It feels limitless. In comparison with other cross platform solutions, you actually get the translated source code and you can play with it if you want.
Pro Not running in its own VM
Unlike other multi-platform engines (Unity3D, Corona, etc), Monkey-X games do not run explicitly in their own virtual machines. Your code is translated into the native languages of each target platform, and then compiled as a native executable. For some platforms "native" is still a VM, but there is no overhead compared to other apps on that platform.
Cons
Con Minimalist documentation
The documentation contains a reasonably detailed language overview, and a somewhat-generated list of the included modules, classes, and methods. Module descriptions are rather lax, but usually present. Method descriptions tend to be short, and a majority of them contain no usage snippets; most parameters have very minimal descriptions. And there are no community collaboration features to help improve it, besides GitHub.
Con You'll have to learn a new programming language
Even though this is not a problem if you're new to programming (since you'll have to learn a language anyway), having to learn a new language develop games is a lot of friction for people that already know how to program in other languages.
Con Development may have stalled
Frequent small updates to Monkey X can be seen on the development branch at GitHub, but the master branch hasn't seen a commit since June 2013.