When comparing Angel2D vs GameSalad, the Slant community recommends GameSalad for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” GameSalad is ranked 64th while Angel2D is ranked 90th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Great for prototyping
The framework is focused on prototyping. It has plenty of features to speed up development. It has a console with a lua interpreter, tuning variables and function calls. GWEN is well supported. Provides a simple interface for Box2D. A simple messaging system with which entities can subscribe to to receive messsages among other things.
Pro Permissive licence and easy to extend
Angel2D is built with the idea that you the game developer should have control over the framework and be able to add features if you like. So the code is BSD-licenced and very easy to extend for anyone that has completed a basic C++ course or equivalent.
Pro Great performance
While Angel2D isn't the best performing framework out there it's certainly no slog when compared to competition. Simply by the virtue of being native it puts itself ahead of engines like Gamemaker and frameworks like Love2D.
Pro Simple interface to lua scripting
If you're not comfortable with a basic subset of C++ it is not recommended to use this framework. But the Lua scripting platform is very nice for generating actors.
Pro Very helpful and simple project set up for newcomers
Often with game engines they throw you into unfamiliar territory and let you explore for yourself. While this wouldn't be a big issue with Angel2D due to it being a very simple framework it kickstarts your game prototyping.
Pro Focused on providing convenient features
Angel was created with game jams in mind, so it's focused on providing as many convenient features as possible, but in a quickly understandable way.
Pro Cross platform
Angel can create games for Windows, the Mac, most flavors of Linux, and iOS. It uses the native build systems on each platform (Visual Studio, Xcode, Make), so you can be up and running as soon as possible.
Pro Low-level code is easily accessible
Low-level code that Angel wraps is always just an easy click away, ready to be overridden or improved.
Pro Very light wrapping on all of the libraries
A very important point that's often underestimated. This framework is designed to be removed. It's not there to provide a complete engine for you which you will have trouble moving away from. The basic interface to Box2D is very spartan. You're given the simplest of Box2D shapes, not even polygonal fixtures. This limitation (seems to be) there so that the integration with the engine is very low. You never create a physics actor with anything more complicated than an enum describing if it's supposed to be a sphere shape or box shape.
Pro Cross-Platform
Pro No-code editor
Pro Has a Windows(.exe) version on par with Mac
The Windows version is now upto date with all the features of its Mac sibling.
Pro Multiple publishing platforms
Can create and publish games for iOS, Macintosh desktop and laptop computers, Android, Kindle, Amazon FireTV and FireTV Stick, Windows 8 and Tizen devices.
Pro Gamepad support
Gamepad support is available as of 0.13.3.
Pro Free standalone viewer app allows instant, live mobile device testing
The GameSalad Viewer is a free app available for iOS, Android and Kindle. Once installed on your mobile devices, you can deploy and test your GameSalad games live on any mobile device running the Viewer that is on the same local network as your dev computer.
This even allows Windows users to test their games on iOS devices without a Mac device and without any complicated code signing or provisioning profiles.
And, you can even take your games with you -- once loaded onto your mobile device, a history option caches recent games on your device without any connection to the dev computer.
Pro Allows you to focus on the logic rather than code
Since the user mainly uses menu options there is very little code needed to be keyed in. This makes the code very easy to read and understand.
Hence there are many help videos on youtube
Pro Extensive community of seasoned professionals for support
Extensive community of seasoned professionals in all disciplines (graphics, game design, animation, physics, music, video production, marketing, etc.) producing tutorials, videos, publishing tips, free templates and who are willing to answer forum questions and help newcomers.
Pro Powerful expression editor and functions
Allows you to create expressions on par with LUA (it's back end-language).
Pro Custom collision shapes with JSON support
Allows you to import JSON data for custom collision shapes to use with Gamesalad's implementation of Box2d physics.
Pro Easy to publish
Software prepares your app so you can just send it to Apple. All my games are reviewed with no problems.
Pro Drag and drop editor
The drag and drop editor makes GameSalad very easy to use, no programming experience needed.
Pro Great engine
Very quick to learn and great for making games. Community is very open and helpful.
Cons
Con No asset pipeline
Unlike XNA/Monogame, Gamemaker or many other similar platforms, Angel2D doesn't have an asset pipeline. The extents of the asset importing is manually loading individual files in code or naming them according to a convention to load a set of them.
Con No longer supported
Hasn't been updated in 2 years.
Con Incomplete documentation
The entire framework is technically documented at http://docs.angel2d.com/ but certain functionality isn't described in there but rather it's just a list of functions. They all have descriptive names and it should be common to run into a feature which isn't given example to in the "Introgame"-project example.
Con Abandoned by developers
Sadly this project has been abandoned by the developer. The main github doesn't see any pull requests fulfilled anymore. There's a debugline draw fix on the github that's rather simple to fix. It is recommended you pull that fork rather than the master branch. Though the simplicity of the framework still makes it a good choice for prototyping.
Con Bad editor
There is no scene zoom, search boxes, or snap to grid. There is also no ability to focus view on the actor or use folders for file structure.
Con Expensive compare with others
There is no free version any more and it is very expensive compared with other engines.
Con Poor editor performance
Especially when you're working on a big project.
Con No scripting language or SDK
If a needed behavior is not supplied by GameSalad, there's no way to add it.
Con Product is suffering - Lacking company leadership and no voice from corporate
Some customers are currently in a holding pattern from the lack of support and messaging from GS corporate. GS is currently unstable and developers are waiting for another update that has been going on from 2015.
No word or message from GS corporate about timeframes or deliverables.
You can read the ongoing discussion here.
Con Product is in Limbo - company is lacking developers
Con Doesn't support Windows platform (*.exe)
Doesn't support Windows platform (*.exe)