When comparing ENIGMA Development Environment vs GDevelop, the Slant community recommends GDevelop for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” GDevelop is ranked 5th while ENIGMA Development Environment is ranked 41st. The most important reason people chose GDevelop is:
GDevelop's runtime libraries are MIT licensed. It can be used freely for projects of any type and there are no royalties associated with publishing games developed with GDevelop.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Raw C++ power and GML accessibility
Almost full support for GML,
The ability to create and access C++ types, templates, and functions, compile DLLs and other C/C++ scripts
Pro Cross platform
Support for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Pro Compatible with GameMaker
Enigma can support over 90% of gamemaker's GML language
Pro Friendly user interface
besides the powerful combination between GML and C++, beginners can also use drag and dropping.
Pro Free and Open Source
Pro Faster than GameMaker
Written in C++, many features have been demonstrated running much faster than interpreted equivalents in GameMaker (up to 10-20 times faster than GM 8.1).
Pro Under active development
Changes are made daily to add new functions/fixing bugs.
Pro Helpful error messages
A full stack trace with available cores and memory information as well as operating system and Java version including file names and number is generated whenever an exception is encountered, with a handy link to submit the issue to GitHub.
Pro Free and open-source
GDevelop's runtime libraries are MIT licensed. It can be used freely for projects of any type and there are no royalties associated with publishing games developed with GDevelop.
Pro Easy to use
The whole interface is intuitive and easy to learn: each part of the game can be designed using visual editors. The objects editor is used to create the objects of the game, the scene editor help you to build the levels of your game and the events editor allows to give life to the whole game without programming.
Pro Powerful events system to create games without programming
No need for coding using this system which is clear and powerful: events are composed of conditions and actions. Actions are launched when conditions are fulfilled.
This is a very friendly way of making games and is still efficient for advanced usage, contrary to most other "block"/"drag'n'drop" systems.
Pro Open source plugin SDK
The plugin SDK is open source, so if you want to extend it, you can.
Pro Support both native and HTML5 games (web and mobile development)
GDevelop is able to create HTML5 games that can run on web browsers and be exported to iOS and Android using solutions like Intel XDK or Cocoon.JS.
GDevelop is also one of the only friendly game creator that is able to make native games for Windows and Linux, which are blazing fast and allow to make advanced games with lots of objects, effects and very large levels.
Pro Lots of features to build games
The engine includes pathfinding, physics engine, multitouch support, custom hitboxes, platformer engine, tiled maps, multiple layers and cameras out of the box.
All of these features can be used without programming knowledge, using the visual editors.
Pro Quickly add behaviors to objects
Prebuilt behaviors can be added to objects. This is a very efficient way to add a physics engine or make a platformer game. Lots of behaviors are included, from the most advanced (Physics, platformer, top-down movement) to really simple one (like the behavior to destroy objects when outside the screen or the one to drag objects with mouse or touch).
And you still have full controls over your game as behaviors can be modified using the events!
Pro Online version available, compatible with iOS and Android
Thanks to its open source nature, GDevApp.com was built over the GDevelop engine.
GDevApp.com is a complete game creator similar to GDevelop, available directly in your browser and compatible with iPad and most Android tablets and phone! The app is perfect for making games directly from your sofa and you can even start a game on GDevApp and export it to open it inside GDevelop.
Pro New documentation for gd5 is good for starting
A new doc is improving for gd5 that is nice for beginners and after that you can learn more from examples. Also, gd4 wiki is still there.
Pro Multilanguage support
GDevelop is available in many languages and even community can help in translations.
Cons
Con A few bugs & glitches
Because Enigma is under very rapid development, with new functions added almost daily, some bugs and unexaplainable glitches can happen, though they also gets patched quickly.
Con No code refactoring
Like any C++ based programs, the ability to refactor is limited. However, the new Ide for engima will support a few refactoring cababilities
Con Still needs more tutorials
It has not bad documentation and forum but still needs more tutorials (although there are some good examples to learn from).
Con No support for atlas/tilemap and sprite sheet
At this point, you need to separate the tileset maps or character animation sprite sheet before importing it to the engine, but the developers are working on this feature.
Con No cross-compiler
The Windows and Linux versions of GDevelop can each compile a native application; but the Windows version cannot compile for Linux, nor vice versa.
Con Behaviours of Objects are rather generalized.
Since it has a fully GUI editor, the objects you are allowed to add in your game are pretty generalized (PhysicsObject, TiledSprite, PlatformerObject, etc). This limits the freedom of a game developer while making a game, as the object msut follow the preset behaviours imposed on it.