GameSalad vs HaxeFlixel

The Windows version is now upto date with all the features of its Mac sibling.

Can create and publish games for iOS, Macintosh desktop and laptop computers, Android, Kindle, Amazon FireTV and FireTV Stick, Windows 8 and Tizen devices.

Gamepad support is available as of 0.13.3.

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.

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

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.

Allows you to create expressions on par with LUA (it's back end-language).

Allows you to import JSON data for custom collision shapes to use with Gamesalad's implementation of Box2d physics.

Software prepares your app so you can just send it to Apple. All my games are reviewed with no problems.

The drag and drop editor makes GameSalad very easy to use, no programming experience needed.

Very quick to learn and great for making games. Community is very open and helpful.

Haxe is a powerful, cross-platform and open source language.

All demos have included GitHub link, so you can learn from the examples

Has a starting guide for people who are completely new to HaxeFlixel; from installing Haxe to a beginner-friendly HaxeFlixel tutorial.

(excerpt from source): To help you do this, the (Haxe) toolkit contains three main components:

the Haxe Language - a modern high-level, strictly typed programming language

the Haxe Standard Library - a complete cross-platform standard library

the Haxe Compiler - an incredibly fast cross-compiler

HaxeFlixel is fully free and open source.

(excerpt from source):

There is a multitude of channels to interact with the community:

• Our google groups forums

• #haxeflixel on IRC (freenode.net)

• @HaxeFlixel on Twitter

• The HaxeFlixel organization on GitHub

• The HaxeFlixel page on IndieDB

• Join our development chat on Slack[1]

• HaxeFlixel group on Steam

You can watch variables, log (trace) messages, and check for memory/frame rate performance.

But with considerable improvements -- the HaxeFlixel team are constantly working improving and fixing the HaxeFlixel API, as compared to the original Flixel which is no longer updated.

(Haxe)Flixel does a lot of things for you like tilemaps and collision detection, which makes it super easy to create 2D games.

The HaxeFlixel team and contributors are very active on Github and other community places (like Slack), and are usually able to respond to your questions within a day or two.

Haxe's syntax is similar to AS3, so Flash developers can transition to HaxeFlixel if they are familiar with AS3/Flixel.

The API has all of the features that you'd expect from a powerful engine without sacrificing organization and flexibility

The open source Flash API is powered by OpenFL, which allows you to compile to Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and even major consoles (coming soon).

On Windows, the IDE of choice is FlashDevelop, but if you're looking for cross-platform IDE (Windows/Mac/Linux), there's Sublime Text which includes a package for Haxe syntax highlighting, as well as auto-completion.