libGDX vs PlayCanvas

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

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.

scene2d is a 2D scene graph, scene2d.ui is a UI toolkit on top of that. It enables very complex mobile and desktop UIs.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

libGDX uses the Apache License 2.0.

Not only is libGDX 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.

It is written in Java so you can easily make games using Kotlin and Ktx project will help you get all advantages of this language.

LibGDX itself is pretty mature, and get updates not quite frequently, but various libraries for it are actively updated.

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

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.

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

Very good tools for rendering fonts.

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

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.

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

Assets and content delivery is very different on a web platform comparing to native. So PlayCanvas challenges best practices to allow developers decide how their content is delivered and in what form.

Async Assets download allows developers to load content as the app goes, instead of asking to download all assets in advance risking users to simply navigate away while staring at loading screens.
Formats for 3D models and textures support covers all the popular tools. And the workflow is as simple as dragging and dropping your files right into the Assets Panel. The cloud will do the rest of the hard work optimizing and converting your files into runtime-friendly and compressed data.

Has an advanced WebGL renderer that runs in the browser.

Lightmaps are an efficient way to deliver lighting to your scenes for a long time. But they come with the cost of large textures. PlayCanvas offers a unique solution for a web platform, it renders lightmaps when an app is loading in runtime.

This is faster than downloading MBs of textures. And it's much more convenient: simply switch your light sources to bake, and static models to be lightmapped, and the engine will do the rest.

PlayCanvas has Feed as homepage for registered users, listing Dev Logs of other developers. This allows to socialize with other developers like yourself in a twitter-like environment.
More to that, there is also an active forum, where developers help each other to solve their challenges.

Developers of PlayCanvas itself are always looking forward to chat and help the community with any problems that may arise.

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

Engine is free for projects under 200MB and with no more than 2 people on a team. The free tier has no engine restrictions.

Tools are totally free too. There are no special limiting features behind any paywalls, and free users have all the features as paid users.

There are no royalties associated with publishing your apps and games - you've made them, you own them.

It is free to publish to playcanvas.com as well, just by one click in Editor.

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

The engine itself weighs just under 150Kb, and it's always challenged to stay small. There is no extra weight that has to be carried with your app, just your assets and scripts in a runtime-friendly compressed form.

This allows users to engage with your content in matter of seconds, and even just under a second on a good connection.

PlayCanvas is fully open source and is under active development.

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