What are the best game engines for pixel graphics?

Question

7

Options
Considered

151

User
Recs.

May 25, 2023

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 7 OptionsWhy?

Best game engines for pixel graphics	Price	License	Languages
90 HaxeFlixel	-	MIT	Haxe
-- Orx	-	zlib	C99
-- libGDX	-	Apache	Java
-- LÖVE	-	zlib	C++, Lua 5.1
-- olcPixelGameEngine	FREE	olc-3	-

See Full List

6 Other Options Considered

Orx

Top Pro

Powerful config system

Powerful config system that makes orx data-driven and provides an easy to use load/save system. See More

Specs

License:zlib

Languages:C99

Dev platforms:Windows XP+, Mac OS X 10.6+, Linux

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

See All Specs

Top Pro

High performance

Written in C with high emphasis on memory and CPU efficiency. See More

Top Pro

Viewport scheme allowing multiple views

Camera/viewport scheme allowing multiple views displayed with camera translation, zoom and rotation. See More

Top Pro

Good animation engine

Includes a chaining graph & custom animation events for synchronization. See More

Top Pro

Custom shader support

GLSL code can be added straight into data configuration files and can be applied to any texture: background or objects whivh allows for some amazing effects. All GLSL versions are supported, again by providing the shader language version in your configuration file. Parameters are supported and values over time for shader animation. See More

Top Pro

Easy post-processing/compositing for complex visual effects

Top Pro

Flexible and simple FX

Color and translation FX are simple to configure and apply to objects. See More

Top Pro

Data configuration

Orx is a Data Driven engine that greatly reduces required code. You can configure object definitions, bodies, cameras, sound, animation, event tracks, etc. See More

Top Pro

Great audio support

Samples for sound effects, or streams for music. All sounds can be groups via audio buses just like in a typical DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). All sounds can be spatial relative to the camera. See More

Top Pro

Good render support

Fragment (pixel) shader support, render to texture, MRT, easy composition and custom rendering support. See More

Top Pro

Input controls and binding

All input devices are fully supported: Joysticks, Mouse, Gamepad, Keyboard and Touchscreen. Multiple physical devices and be mapped the same binding. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Uses the zlib license. Lets you use Orx for free for any kind of projects, even for commercial ones. See More

Top Pro

Friendly community

Good friendly development community ready to help each other with tips and advice for setting up and best practices. See More

Top Pro

Automatic hot-loading of resources

Automatic hot-loading of resources upon modification on disk, shortens drastically iteration times. See More

Top Pro

Supports desktop and mobile

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

Top Pro

Integrated runtime profiler

Integrated runtime profiler (with graphical display) to easily spot which parts of your game need to be optimized. See More

Top Pro

Flexible clock system

Clock system that provides time consistency and allows time stretching + high precision timers. See More

Top Pro

Collision handling and rigid body physics

Top Pro

Screenshot capture tool

Supports .bmp, .png, .jpg, .tga and .dds. See More

See All

libGDX

Top Pro

Support for 3rd party tools

libGDX has built in support for many 3rd party tools, including (but not limited to) Bullet Physics, Box2DLights and the well-praised Tiled Map Editor. See More

Top Con

Not starter friendly

Even default applications fail to load in Android. It doesn't have any documentation on errors either. See More

Specs

License:Apache

Languages:Java

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux; HTML5

See All Specs

Top Pro

Free, open source & permissive license

libGDX uses the Apache License 2.0. Not only libGDX is free and open source but also it's license gives you a lot of power over the engine. As long as you provide a copy of the license, give credit, do not hold devs liable and do not use libGDX logo in any engine forks you can do pretty much anything you want. See More

Top Con

Documentation could be better

Other than a brief installation / getting started overview, libGDX's documentation consists of an official wiki with several incomplete pages, and automated Javadocs. The community recognizes these shortcomings, and new users are encouraged to ask for help. See More

Top Pro

Active and helpful community

The libGDX community, in the official libGDX forum is extremely helpful and approachable for any kind of question regardless of the its quality or difficulty. The forums themselves are a very helpful resource for any issue or guide simply by searching past posts in there. In addition to the forums, there's also the official #libgdx IRC channel on Freenode. See More

Top Con

Does not create compiled code

LibGDX runs entirely on Java and does not create executable binaries. See More

Top Pro

Lots of resources to learn from

Lots of references, tutorials and open source code to learn from. See More

Top Con

Java not best language for gamedev

Because all professionals in gamedev and many libraries for gamedev use C++ See More

Top Pro

Can use any JVM language

Since it's built with Java and runs on the JVM, any language that compiles to Java bytecode can be used to develop games with libGDX. See More

Top Con

A bit difficult to use

This engine is not well put together. Is made from various free modules each with their own peculiarities. At times it feels you need to learn a couple of libraries rather than just one. Is not an engine for beginners as it requires coding. Lots of coding. You need to be intermediate to advanced in Java to develop in LibGDX. See More

Top Pro

Great API

Top Pro

Lot's of tutorials to get you going

Even though the official documentation might be lacking, there are many tutorials on YouTube for libGDX. See More

Top Pro

Focusing on object pool patterns, to control memory without pointers

Unlike Unity or other engine, it allows to optimize a language that uses garbage collector when using patterns of objects you can control the use of memory without needing a language like C / C ++, getting the same speed in a more productive language. See More

Top Pro

Constantly improved

Top Pro

Similar to the Microsoft XNA framework

Old XNA users may like libGDX since it's API is actually very similar to XNA's. See More

Top Pro

Scene2d support

Top Pro

Interfacing with platform specific code

Sometimes it is necessary to access platform specific APIs, e.g., adding advertisement services or leaderboard functionality provided by frameworks. See More

Top Pro

Uses Box2D

A Java port of the Box2D physics engine is included in libGDX. See More

Top Pro

Doesn't force a specific design

Unlike some engines, which only allow you to make your game in a few specific ways, libGDX allows you to design any type of game you wish as it is extremely customisable. See More

Top Pro

Supports desktop, mobile and web

Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and HTML5/WebGL. Being able to develop & run mobile games on the desktop is very efficient to rapidly iterate. See More

Top Pro

Easy To Learn

Top Pro

Across platform support

You can write one and run anywhere (Android, IOS, Desktop, Browser) also lately came with lib to deal with VR See More

Top Pro

Great performance across devices

While it may not always have the best performance for a particular device or system, it's one of the few engines which consistently performs very well across different platforms. See More

Top Pro

Very easy to customize

Top Pro

Allows you to migrate from 2D to 3D within same framework

LibGDX supports both 2D and 3D game development. Allowing developers to migrate from 2D to 3D with ease without having to switch the engine they are using or having to learn a new API. See More

Top Pro

Gradle support

Allows easy integration with multiple IDEs, easy dependency management and provides shell support. See More

See All

LÖVE

Top Pro

Cross-platform

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

Top Con

Absolutely no GUI (no graphical interface)

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

Specs

License:zlib

Languages:C++, Lua 5.1

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

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

See All Specs

Top Pro

Can develop within Android

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

Top Con

Documentation is very dry and technical

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

Top Pro

Many examples and libraries with source code

GUI, light&shadows, physics particles editors, etc. See More

Top Con

No binary compilation

No way to compile into a binary under Linux. Source code has to be given away. See More

Top Pro

Easy to understand and use

Great fresh easy robust API: Box2d physics, image, graphics, shaders and other. See More

Top Con

The community seems juvenile

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

Top Pro

Active and very friendly community

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

Top Pro

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

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

Top Pro

Great for prototyping

You can learn the basics very quickly and start making simple games in no time, even if you have no previous lua knowledge. If you're a little experienced with LÖVE, you can prototype a 2D game with it in no time. You can't compile binaries, but even if you want to make a closed source game in the end, you can prototype in LÖVE very quickly. See More

Top Pro

Open source and free

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

Top Pro

Uses the fantastic Lua for scripting

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

Top Pro

Very good documentation

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

See All

olcPixelGameEngine

Top Pro

Easy to use

Simple header-only library. See More

Top Con

Sound is completely broken

AffableYuqiang's Experience

very simple to use. Sound can easily be added b using f.ex SFML's audio, altough I think audio is added to PGE now, i have not tested it. But adding audio from SFML is very easy, (SFML is perhaps quite easy as a framework too, but its bigger, and even just using audio from SFML with the PixelGameEngine means you'll add a couple of .libs (or DLL) with a couple of headers, etc. BUT, on the other hand it takes you about 5min to read how, code, and play a sound. Would recommend PixelGameEngine for anyone wanting to learn C++. Its great as its quite easy to set up an begin, and it is powerfull enough for most 2D stuff. Also cannot underestimate how much i love that its just 1 .h file to include. :) See More

Specs

License:olc-3

Supported languages:c++

Price:free

Top Pro

Youtube video tutorials

Videos explaining different things that can be done with the engine, as well as some programming concepts. See More

Top Con

Debug mode can be slow

Due to a specific OpenGL call (however, this is fixed by running in release mode). See More

CreativeNerio's Experience

Easy to use and set up, a simple header only library, have made a few games with relative ease See More

Top Pro

Community help

A fantastic Discord Community that can help with any questions you may have. See More

Top Pro

Extensions

There are extensions to increase the functionality of the engine, such as: 2D Affine transforms 3D Software renderer Controller input Sound Hardware interfaces See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Can be used on Windows, Linux and there is even a port for Mac. See More

Top Pro

Ports with most functionality to C#

See All

Godot

Top Con

2DPhysics is weak compared to Box2d

Box2d has much more features. See More

Top Pro

Fully dedicated 2D engine, no hacks

Godot 2.1 has a improved 2d engine with many features used by modern 2D games. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

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

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

OSX app is a mess

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

Top Pro

Active 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. By feb 2016 Vulkan will be supported including a complete 3D engine overhaul. The audio engine is being completely rewritten to use threads and so forth. See More

Top Con

NoAdmob or other AdNetwork support

Godot has no native support for Ads. See More

Top Pro

Multi-platform deploy

Deploy games on desktop (Windows/OS X/Linux), mobile (iOS/Android/BlackBerry), and web (HTML5 via Emscripten). See More

Top Con

No built-in way to import atlases

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

Top Pro

User friendly UI for all your team

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

Top Con

Tileset management could be more efficient

The tileset creation and management is more complicated than it should be. See More

Top Pro

Unified game editor interface

All the game developing work is done inside one program: the engine editor. This feature is something only high end engines have. Even the scripting is done in the same program. No need for Eclipse or other front end editors. See More

Top Con

Very bad documentation

The documentation is poorly written, and has very few examples of real application and even fewer design guidelines about how to program a game in the engine. 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

Hard for a unity user

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

Top Pro

Free and open source

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

Top Pro

Fun to use

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

Top Pro

Multi-platform deploy

Deploy games on desktop (Windows/OS X/Linux), mobile (iOS/Android/BlackBerry), and web (HTML5 via Emscripten). See More

Top Pro

Drag & drop interface

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

Top Pro

Lightweight

It's less then 30mb in size. See More

Top Pro

Internationalization of the editor

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

Top Pro

Editor and runtime works on OSX

Mac's can develop and run Godot Engine titles See More

Top Pro

Instancing and node concept makes sense

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

Top Pro

Built-in physics

Add physics to 2D and 3D scenes, through rigid and static bodies, characters, raycasts, vehicles and more. 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 format, but it is not python. More like a mix of Javascript, PHP, C++. It's very powerful, easy to learn, and it's free of unnecessary things because it's designed for this purpose. 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

Editor and runtime works on OSX

You can develop on, and publish to Linux. See More

See All

Monkey X

Top 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. See More

Top Con

No real asset store

Untangling how to keep assets in the ".data" requires attention and a filenaming convention. See More

Specs

License:zlib/libpng

Languages:Monkey X

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux

See All Specs

Top Pro

Built-in modules for quickly building games

Monkey X has a selection of great built-in modules. Graphics Audio Input Data and Filesystems Networking Math Text and Strings Collections Online Services See More

Top Con

The documentation is not very thorough

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. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Monkey X is a cross-platform game engine. It allows developers to run the same code on multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Flash, Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The development environment supports Windows, OS X, and Linux. See More

Top Con

Free version only targets Desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux) and HTML5

Top 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... See More

Top Con

The included IDE is poor

Although better IDE'S are availabe for a price, the default one is bare bones and lacks functionality See More

Top Pro

Uses a great, easy to learn language

Monkey X uses a custom programming language (called Monkey) for all its scripting needs. Monkey is rather easy to learn, it's object-oriented which will help most programmers with understanding it. It's also statically typed and uses a garbage collector, helping to avoid manual memory management. See More

Top Con

You'll have to learn a new programming language

Even though Monkey is rather easy to learn and borrows a lot of concepts from more popular languages, having to learn a new language develop games is a lot of friction for people that already know how to program in other languages.. See More

Top Pro

Object oriented programming

MonkeyX is an object-oriented dialect of BASIC that's easy, clean and powerful. See More

Top Pro

Low cost license fee

All target platforms for a fair one off license fee. See More

Top Pro

Free HTML5 and Desktop (GLFW) target platform

The free version of Monkey X lets you compile to HTML5 or Desktop (GLFW). Other platforms such as iOS, Android (and OUYA), XNA, Flash and Windows 8 (Phone) require the paid version of Monkey X Pro. See More

Top Pro

You can create custom targets

The language gives you the possibility to build your own targets. You are not limited to the targets officially supported. See More

Top Pro

Drawing Commands

Drawing commands are easier to read and edit than is manipulating scene graphs. You can immediately see in your code what's going to be drawn and in what order. Transformations are a no-brainer too. See More

Top Pro

Lots of great examples

Monkey X includes over 50 examples ranging from complete sample games to demos of single features. See More

Top 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. However, just as native games, on platforms such as Android (Currently), and HTML5, games will be ran through the targeted platform's usual VM(s). That being said, you won't be dealing with a proprietary virtual machine, so you won't experience any real overhead when compared to a native game. See More

Top Pro

Free for commercial releases

With the free version of Monkey you are still able to create commercial HTML5 and Desktop games. See More

Top Pro

Native code support

Developers can make native calls directly from Monkey code. This allows access to any native functionality and platform-specific features. See More

Top Pro

Made by the Mark Sibly Factor

The Mark Sibly Factor denotes that a programming language will be easy to learn, fun to learn and allow any age group ( within Cognitive Reason ) to program games and great games. The Mark Sibly Factor denotes also that the games programming language you purchase will be backed by decades of compiler programming experience, game making tool programming and finally a Game Programming Language that kicks Ass. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Helpful community

Helpful community for beginners is available both in english and russian. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn

With it's Object orientation and clean syntax its a brilliant language to learn if you have never done any programming before and yet still has all the power it needs to make full games and apps. See More

See All

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HaxeFlixel

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 Con

Small community

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

Specs

License:MIT

Languages:Haxe

Dev platforms:Linux; OSX; Windows

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

See All Specs

Top Pro

Fully free

HaxeFlixel is fully free and open source. See More

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

Hardware accelerated rendering on native platforms

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

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

Free and Open Source

MIT Licensed See More

Top Pro

Continues to be developed

With a full time developer and multiple contributors actively adding new features and keeping things up, HaxeFlixel is a vibrant project to this day. See More

Top Pro

Compiles to all platforms

Includes BlackBerry, Linux, Flash, iOS, Mac, HTML5, Android, Windows, WebOS, and Neko. See More

Top Pro

Really easy to use

With really good documentation and support for a multitude of platforms not to mention it uses a language based around ActionScript 3, it makes for a good engine to use for those looking to easily get started. 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

Top Pro

75+ demos

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

Top Pro

Powerful language

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

See All

The Best 1 of 7 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for HaxeFlixel

My Recommendation for HaxeFlixel

Easy 2D game development

Small community

Fully free

Active development community

Hardware accelerated rendering on native platforms

Uses Haxe

Getting started guide

Free and Open Source

Continues to be developed

Compiles to all platforms

Really easy to use

Cross-platform IDE environment

75+ demos

Powerful language

Cross Platform

6 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for Orx

My Recommendation for Orx

Powerful config system

High performance

Viewport scheme allowing multiple views

Good animation engine

Custom shader support

Easy post-processing/compositing for complex visual effects

Flexible and simple FX

Data configuration

Great audio support

Good render support

Input controls and binding

Free and open source

Friendly community

Automatic hot-loading of resources

Supports desktop and mobile

Integrated runtime profiler

Flexible clock system

Collision handling and rigid body physics

Screenshot capture tool

My Recommendation for libGDX

My Recommendation for libGDX

Support for 3rd party tools

Not starter friendly

Free, open source & permissive license

Documentation could be better

Active and helpful community

Does not create compiled code

Lots of resources to learn from

Java not best language for gamedev

Can use any JVM language

A bit difficult to use

Great API

Lot's of tutorials to get you going

Focusing on object pool patterns, to control memory without pointers

Constantly improved

Similar to the Microsoft XNA framework

Scene2d support

Interfacing with platform specific code

Uses Box2D

Doesn't force a specific design

Supports desktop, mobile and web

Easy To Learn

Across platform support

Great performance across devices

Very easy to customize

Allows you to migrate from 2D to 3D within same framework

Gradle support

My Recommendation for LÖVE

My Recommendation for LÖVE

Cross-platform

Absolutely no GUI (no graphical interface)

Can develop within Android

Documentation is very dry and technical

Many examples and libraries with source code

No binary compilation

Easy to understand and use

The community seems juvenile

Active and very friendly community

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