When comparing pygame vs Buildbox, the Slant community recommends pygame for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” pygame is ranked 16th while Buildbox is ranked 51st. The most important reason people chose pygame is:
Pygame uses Python as its scripting language. Python is widely considered one of the easiest languages to grasp even for beginners.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Easy Python syntax
Pygame uses Python as its scripting language. Python is widely considered one of the easiest languages to grasp even for beginners.
Pro Very easy to understand
The API is very straightforward.
Pro Good canvas system
Pygame has a drawing system that allows the user to create and draw on an unlimited number of canvases.
Pro Drag - and - drop editor
Drag - and - drop editor without writing any line of code.
Pro Easy to learn
Buildbox is a drag and drop engine, making it easy for beginners to pick up. There are many tutorials available to help get you started.
Pro Has many game templates
Buildbox has 20+ different game templates including templates for platformers, racing games and Flappy Bird clones.
Pro Built-in support for ads
You can add banner and interstitial ads from multiple ad networks, including AdMob, RevMob, Facebook. They can work with Amazon's, Microsoft's, Google's and Apple's app stores.
Pro Develop once publish everywhere
Exporting iOS/Android/macOS/Windows/Steam/Amazon
Pro Cross-platform
Cons
Con Deathly slow
Con Nonexistent community
No good forums, wiki, or other ways to reach other Pygame developers.
Con Very basic
Pretty much just a wrapper for SDL.
Con Pygame is a multimedia framework, not a game engine
Physics, AI and networking are not supported.
Con Messy documentation
The docs are messy, and some basic functions are infuriating to work out. There's even some places in the documentation where it's clearly wrong about how a method is called/what the arguments really do.
Con Outdated
Pygame uses a really old version of SDL and is missing some of the features developed for SDL2.
Con Hasn't been updated in years
Hasn't been updated in years.
Con Incredibly Expensive
$99/mo for full functionality probably makes this the least accessible piece of game development software in regards to price, all with a very limiting feature set.
Con You are restricted by it's limitations
For example, you can only make certain kind of games.
Con Not very powerful
You will be limited to using templates to build games.
Con Subscription Model
The two more reasonable price points limit the functionality of a software already far less powerful than many more cost effective alternatives.
Con Very expensive
Buildbox has a 15-day trial version, after that a $2675 license to use it must be bought.
Con Stability Issues
The software has stability issues on Windows, with the preview window causing program crashes when simple functionality is added.