When comparing GameMaker Studio 2 vs HaxeFlixel, the Slant community recommends HaxeFlixel for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” HaxeFlixel is ranked 24th while GameMaker Studio 2 is ranked 67th. The most important reason people chose HaxeFlixel is:
[Haxe](http://www.haxe.org) is a powerful, cross-platform and open source language.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Quick prototyping
Pro Good user interface
Pro Well-optimized engine
Pro Has a trial version (but limited functions, can't export)
Pro Many unofficial tutorials
Most GMS1 tutorials are fine for GMS2
Pro Highly customizable IDE
Although users must work within the IDE and editor, GMS2 has many options to customize the look and feel
Pro Good documentation
Pro Huge, generous community
Pro Powerful language
Haxe is a powerful, cross-platform and open source language.
Pro 75+ demos
All demos have included GitHub link, so you can learn from the examples
Pro Getting started guide
Has a starting guide for people who are completely new to HaxeFlixel; from installing Haxe to a beginner-friendly HaxeFlixel tutorial.
Pro Uses Haxe
(excerpt from source): To help you do this, the (Haxe) toolkit contains three main components:
the Haxe Language - a modern high-level, strictly typed programming language
the Haxe Standard Library - a complete cross-platform standard library
the Haxe Compiler - an incredibly fast cross-compiler
Pro Fully free
HaxeFlixel is fully free and open source.
Pro Hardware accelerated rendering on native platforms
Pro Active development community
(excerpt from source):
There is a multitude of channels to interact with the community:
Our google groups forums
#haxeflixel on IRC (freenode.net)
@HaxeFlixel on Twitter
The HaxeFlixel organization on GitHub
The HaxeFlixel page on IndieDB
Join our development chat on Slack[1]
HaxeFlixel group on Steam
Pro Powerful debugger overlay
You can watch variables, log (trace) messages, and check for memory/frame rate performance.
Pro Modelled after Flixel
But with considerable improvements -- the HaxeFlixel team are constantly working improving and fixing the HaxeFlixel API, as compared to the original Flixel which is no longer updated.
Pro Easy 2D game development
(Haxe)Flixel does a lot of things for you like tilemaps and collision detection, which makes it super easy to create 2D games.
Pro Outstanding community
The HaxeFlixel team and contributors are very active on Github and other community places (like Slack), and are usually able to respond to your questions within a day or two.
Pro Similar syntax to Actionscript 3
Haxe's syntax is similar to AS3, so Flash developers can transition to HaxeFlixel if they are familiar with AS3/Flixel.
Pro Excellent, robust API
The API has all of the features that you'd expect from a powerful engine without sacrificing organization and flexibility
Pro Cross Platform
The open source Flash API is powered by OpenFL, which allows you to compile to Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and even major consoles (coming soon).
Pro Cross-platform IDE environment
On Windows, the IDE of choice is FlashDevelop, but if you're looking for cross-platform IDE (Windows/Mac/Linux), there's Sublime Text which includes a package for Haxe syntax highlighting, as well as auto-completion.
Cons
Con Not the best scripting language out there
GML is just weird; if you want to learn programming, it is not the best because it teaches bad habits and has many odd shortcuts and shortcomings that won't transfer to a real language
Con HTML5 export is buggy, doesn't "just work"
Con Quite expensive
Windows ($100) + HTML5 ($140) + Mobile ($400) + UWP ($400) is $1,050, plus $800 anually for each console export separately. But doesn't do anything any of the free engines can't do, and the stability and tech support aren't great.
Con Unstable
Users frequently report crashes and hangs, particularly when working with assets, and the software uses a complicated underlying meta-file structure that may become corrupted and cannot be rebuilt
Con Limited support for OOP
Con Small development team
The core programming team is only 5-10 people, with about 30 employees total, so bug fixes can take a long time to be addressed, and there aren't many official tutorials
Con Small community
HaxeFlixel devs are not as large as (example) Unity devs, so the amount of support and exposure is limited.