When comparing Scratch vs Defold, the Slant community recommends Defold for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Defold is ranked 23rd while Scratch is ranked 80th. 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 Great starting point for kids
Scratch was developed specifically for kids ages 8 and up as an exciting way to introduce them to technology. It's designed to be easy to learn, but still provides good depth in computational thinking.
Pro Visual
Code is represented as visual building blocks that makes it easy to understand how a program is put together.

Pro Easy to learn
Scratch is designed to teach computational thinking rather than focus on specific syntax. It was designed specifically to be easy to learn for anyone over the age of 8.

Pro No need to be able to type

Pro Can be used to create games
Pro Highly structured
The language is highly structured. Therefore, it gives you the essentials of how to think like a programmer and teaches you good programming practices from early on, so you could write clean, working and readable code in the future.
Pro Easy to learn
Defold uses Lua, which is regarded as an easy to learn language by most.
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 Completely free of charge
Software and online dashboard are free of charge.
Pro Collaborative
You can invite friends from the dashboard and create games together.
Pro Visual editor
Pro Fast results
Going from idea to result is very important for the creative process.
Pro Very performant
Being crossplatform it is important to work on low end devices.
Pro Great community
A very active and friendly community in forums.
Pro Easy and fast export for various platforms
Pro Source code available
You can download and modify the source code of the Editor and the engine for free.
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 Does not teach you programming
Learning Scratch might help you if you have high difficulty with logical thinking. However, starting with a proper programming language, especially an easy one, will give you the benefits of starting with something like Scratch and everything else.
Con For kids, so don't even mention it in a job interview: it makes you look like a noob.
Con Won't get you a job
Scratch is not a language used in the workplace. Instead it teaches computational thinking, helping to create a foundation to aid in learning other languages.
Con Strange OOP
Scratch has a very strange implementation of OOP that is sprite based, and will become very confusing when you move to other languages.
Con Google account needed
You need a Google account to develop with Defold.
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