When comparing Flixel vs Ren'Py, the Slant community recommends Flixel for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Flixel is ranked 20th while Ren'Py is ranked 39th. The most important reason people chose Flixel is:
Ports are available for Objective C, C# (XNA), HaXe and [Monkey X](https://github.com/devolonter/flixel-monkey).
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 Cross-platform
Available on Windows, Linux, OSX, iOS and Android.
Pro Active and friendly community
Pro Reasonably good at creating puzzle and point-and-click games
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 for every genre
While technically capable of creating 2D games in any genre, Ren'Py excels in creating visual novels and has a reasonable feature set for creating puzzle and point-and-click games. Other genres are best tackled by other engines.
Con Outdated Documentation and official built-in tutorials
Unfortunately, you will have to hunt relevant info on how Ren'py script works. The Ren'Py dev has the working tutorials on his Patreon, other than that you might as well just code in Python.