When comparing Adventure Game Studio vs Flax Engine, the Slant community recommends Adventure Game Studio for most people. In the question“What are the best game engines for point & click adventure games?” Adventure Game Studio is ranked 1st while Flax Engine is ranked 54th. The most important reason people chose Adventure Game Studio is:
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.
Specs
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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 Free
Can be used for free until you hit a rather high revenue cap, at which point you have to pay royalties.
Pro Powerful C# scripting
C# scripting is really well made, comparable to Unity, but without any of the legacy cruft.
Pro Multiplatform
Supports most platforms, including Windows, Linux, Android, Nintendo Switch, ...
Pro Modern rendering backend
Has a very modern, performant and beautiful rendering backend.
Pro C++ support
The entire core is written in C++ and it supports writing game code in C++. The interoperability between C# and C++ is also nothing to scoff at.
Pro Supports multiple IDEs
Works with any text editor and comes with proper support for Visual Studio, VSCode and Jetbrains Rider.
Pro Excellent documentation
The documentation is well written, up to date and accepts improvements from the community.
Pro Great and extensible editor
The editor is both powerful and simple. My favourite part is how easy it is to extend the editor with custom magic.
Pro Source code available
The entire source of the engine is available on Github, though not under an open source license.
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)
Con New software
As is standard with new software, not all of the bugs have been ironed out yet.
Con Few plugins
Unlike more mature engines, there isn't a vibrant ecosystem of plugins yet.
Con Not open source
While the source code is available, it's not quite open source
Con Not latest C# version
It uses Mono and is still on some variant of C# 7.
Con No OpenGL support
It only supports modern APIs, namely Vulkan and DirectX. This means that it won't run on very old machines.
