When comparing Stencyl vs FlatRedBall, the Slant community recommends Stencyl for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Stencyl is ranked 11th while FlatRedBall is ranked 44th. 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 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.
Pro Continually improving and open source
Just check the commit frequency on github :)
https://github.com/vchelaru/FlatRedBall/commits/master
Plus Victor takes community input seriously and is known to shift around priorities based on the pressing needs of the community
Pro Very easy to use
Simplifies routine tasks such as adding entities and files to the game, or tuning parameters, via the FRB Editor called Glue
Pro Great community
Very active chat on gitter: https://gitter.im/vchelaru/FlatRedBall
Victor (the creator of the engine) is available throughout the day to answer questions and solve any problems that may arise, along with the rest of the community members who are ready to assist in any way they can.
Pro Extensive documentation
http://flatredball.com/documentation/
Very good documentation not only regarding the API details, but also lots of tutorials covering different aspects of using FRB, either on the code-side or on using any of its tools.
Cons
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.
Con Tile system is somewhat inflexible
Con The editor's UI looks dated
Although functional, doesn't look as flashy as Unity for example, which may put some people off.