When comparing Flixel vs Stencyl, the Slant community recommends Stencyl for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Stencyl is ranked 11th while Flixel is ranked 20th. The most important reason people chose Stencyl is:
Power users can also write code in Haxe (similar to Actionscript 3) to create their own custom classes and extend the engine.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Many ports available
Ports are available for Objective C, C# (XNA), HaXe and Monkey X.
Pro Built-in pathfinding and following
Pathfinding just means figuring out how to (or if you can) get from A to B. FlxTilemap has a function FlxTilemap.findPath() which returns a FlxPath object, which is just a collection of "nodes", or FlxPoint objects.
Pro Camera system for split screen
Create effects like "split screen" views, or "picture in picture" style displays, or even mini-maps with FlxCamera. Each camera is an independent display object, with its own zoom, color tint, rotation, and scaling values.
Pro Record and play back replays
Replays are essentially a list of what keyboard keys were pressed, and what mouse inputs were given, during a specific time frame. Because Flixel is largely deterministic, you can use that information to recreate a gameplay session that someone else recorded, as long as you have the same SWF.
Pro Basic features provide a solid foundation
- Display thousands of moving objects
- Basic collisions between objects
- Group objects together for simplicity
- Easily generate and emit particles
- Create game levels using tilemaps
- Text display, save games, scrolling
- Mouse & keyboard input
- Math & color utilities
Pro Flixel Power Tools extend the functionality
Flixel Power Tools provide a set of classes and APIs that provide more functionality.
Pro Used to create Canabalt, game that started endless runner genre
Pro Haxe scripting available for advanced users
Power users can also write code in Haxe (similar to Actionscript 3) to create their own custom classes and extend the engine.
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.
Pro Cross-Platform
Publish iOS, Android, Flash, Windows and Mac games without code.
Pro It's a NO-CODE Program, you can add logic without code
Pro The original concept for Ghost Song was created using Stencyl
The original concept for Ghost Song was created using Stencyl 3.x
Pro Great performance on every platform
Stencyl exports your games to native code so they have great performance on every platform.
Cons
Con It is now obsolete
With Adobe Flash dead, Flixel is now unworkable.
Con Development has stopped
Seems like development for Flixel has stopped. The last commit on all of the branches of it's Github repository are from 2011.
Con Poor performance on mobile
Con Not a powerful engine
Should be used for basic games only.
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!
Con Slow release cycle
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.