Defold vs Unity 2D

Defold uses Lua, which is regarded as an easy to learn language by most.

Software and online dashboard are free of charge.

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.

Going from idea to result is very important for the creative process.

Being crossplatform it is important to work on low end devices.

A very active and friendly community in forums.

You can download and modify the source code of the Editor and the engine for free.

You can invite friends from the dashboard and create games together.

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.

2D game creation was a major feature request from the Unity community and was added with version 4.3. 2D is provided in both the Pro and Free distribution of Unity.

Mecanim brings state machines and blending to 2D bone animation. The state machine editor allows for designers and programmers to visually create a Finite State Machine (FSM) to control when animations should play. Mecanim also allows for blending so an animation can transition smoothly between two states without the need of in between frames made by an animator.

Both types of 2D animation for game development are supported in Unity’s system and can be used interchangeably in the timeline.

Usually used for character customization, programmers can change any sprite in a bone animation at runtime easily by referencing the bone and loading the new sprite from the resources folder.