When comparing Adventure Game Studio vs Defold, the Slant community recommends Defold for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Defold is ranked 21st while Adventure Game Studio is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Defold is:
Defold uses Lua, which is regarded as an easy to learn language by most.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to learn tool
Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine.
Pro Completely free and open source
AGS is licensed under Artistic License 2.0 and is completely free for use for creating both freeware and commercial games.
Pro Relatively well documented
Besides the manual there are multiple text and video tutorials and code samples written by community.
Pro Used for a number of high-profile commercial releases
Adventure Game Studio has been used to develop games such as "Resonance", "Blackwell" series, "Gemini Rue", "Primordia".
Pro Lots of assets available
An extensive library of game templates and script modules accumulated over years. You can construct a simple game in hours (if you know what you are doing).
Pro Friendly community
An old, big and active community which would support newcomers not only in learning basics of the engine, but can help with every aspect of game making (including art, voice acting, moral support, etc).
Pro Easy to learn
Defold uses Lua, which is regarded as an easy to learn language by most.
Pro Completely free of charge
Software and online dashboard are free of charge.
Pro Good combination of visual editing + code (Lua)
You can do a lot with drag and drop, but you're not limited -- the code (Lua, which is easy to learn) allows you more power than just visual editing usually gives you.
Pro Fast results
Going from idea to result is very important for the creative process.
Pro Visual editor
Pro Very performant
Being crossplatform it is important to work on low end devices.
Pro Easy and fast export for various platforms
Pro Great community
A very active and friendly community in forums.
Pro Source code available
You can download and modify the source code of the Editor and the engine for free.
Pro Collaborative
You can invite friends from the dashboard and create games together.
Pro Hot reload
It allows you to change scripts in a game while it is running live. Common use-cases is to tweak gameplay parameters or to perform debugging on a running game.
Cons
Con Natively supports only 2D
2D only native support, 3D could be supported with plugins though.
Con Uses dated tech
Engine is based on the old technologies, which impose number of limitations and may cause problems on latest systems (level of annoyance varies depending on your priorities).
Con Graphics renderer is a bit dated
Graphics renderer is not well optimized for high-resolution games and complex effects.
Con No visual editor for scripts
You have to actually write all scripts yourself.
Con Development is slow
Further development of the engine is currently slow, done by only few people in their free time.
Con AGS Script isn't as full-featured as other scripting languages
Its own scripting language has lower syntax capabilities compared to modern script languages.
Con Assets cover almost exclusively adventure/quest genre
The features, script functions and game templates are very biased towards adventure/quest genre. The non-adventure games were made in AGS (2D shooters, platformers, turn-based strategies), but their development usually requires to write everything from scratch.
Con Workflow is closely coupled with the editor
Workflow is very tied to the editor and custom file formats, which can cause problems for bigger, more professional projects (interfering with source control, parallel development, automated builds, etc)