ShiVa3D vs Defold

Smaller platform specific executables, native code export, good FPS even for complex scenes. ShiVa has great advanced optimization features, including PVS and LOD, decreasing number of drawcalls even in complex level. Platform specific profiles allow developers to customize size and compression level for textures and test those settings directly in editor. Other engine features, like lightning baking, mesh combining and GPU skinning will boost performance too.

The free ShiVa Web version is limited to web publication, but otherwise has the same capabilities as the $200 ShiVa Basic. Upgrading to the $1000 ShiVa Advanced brings tools geared toward team development and professional releases, such as integrated SVN support and profiling tools. All versions are royalty-free.

All game logic can be scripted in Lua. ShiVa also provides a cross-compiler from Lua to C++, allowing Lua scripts to be further optimized and compiled to native code for performance.

In addition to the help forum, Basic and Advanced licensees have chat and direct email access to the developers.

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.