Gaming: 2D Game Engines

I have decided to learn, develop and market a Game. Cool!!! but which game engine/framework should I go with?

What are the pros and cons of existing Game Engines?

Where can I leverage my existing coding and design skills ?

Today, this post will try to answer few of the questions.There are N number of game engines. We will talk about only a few here.

Construct 2

Construct 2 is a powerful ground breaking HTML5 game creator designed specifically for 2D games. It allows anyone to build games — no coding required!

• Quick& Easy
• Powerful Event System
• Flexible Behaviors
• Instant Preview
• Stunning Visual Effects
• Multiplatform Export
• Easy Extensibility

Unity 2D

Unity is a game development ecosystem: a powerful rendering engine fully integrated with a complete set of intuitive tools and rapid workflows to create interactive 3D and 2D content; easy multiplatform publishing; thousands of quality, ready-made assets in the Asset Store and a knowledge-sharing community.

For independent developers and studios, Unity’s democratizing ecosystem smashes the time and cost barriers to creating uniquely beautiful games. They are using Unity to build a livelihood doing what they love: creating games that hook and delight players on any platform.

• Workflow
• Quality
• 2D & 3D
• Mecanim
• Performance
• Multiplatform
• Collaboration
• Large community and Forums
• Vast Asset store (with Free/paid Assets)

Coding : C#, UnityScript (Javascript) and Boo

GameMaker: Studio

GameMaker: Studio caters to entry-level novices and seasoned game development professionals equally, allowing them to create cross-platform games in record time and at a fraction of the cost!

In addition to making games development 80 percent faster than coding for native languages, developers can create fully functional prototypes in just a few hours, and a full game in just a matter of weeks.

• Workflow
• Multiformat Export
• Quality
• Performance
• Developer Services
• Collaboration
• Marketplace
• Easy to Learn

Coding: Game Maker Language (GML)

Gideros

Gideros provides the cross-platform technology to create amazing games. In a couple of hours, you’ll find yourself building and running your next great game.

• It's Free
• Instant Testing
• Native Speed
• Plugins
• Clean OOP Approach
• Full Dev Set
• Fast development
• CrossPlatform

Coding: Lua Scripting

Cocos2D/Cocos2D-x

cocos2d is a framework for building 2D games, demos, and other graphical/interactive applications.

Cocos2d contains many branches with the best known being Cocos2d-iPhone, Cocos2d-x, Cocos2d-html5 and Cocos2d-XNA.

• Flow control: Manage the flow control between different scenes in an easy way
• Sprites: Fast and easy sprites
• Actions: Just tell sprites what you want them to do. Composable actions like move, rotate, scale and much more
• Effects: Effects like waves, twirl, lens and much more
• Tiled Maps: Support for rectangular and hexagonal tiled maps
• Transitions: Move from scene to scene with style
• Menus: Built in classes to create menus
• Text Rendering: Label and HTMLLabel with action support
• Documentation: Programming Guide + API Reference + Video Tutorials + Lots of simple tests showing how to use it
• Built-in Python Interpreter: For debugging purposes
• BSD License: Just use it
• Pyglet Based: No external dependencies
• OpenGL Based: Hardware Acceleration

Coding: Multiple Languages

There are many other 2D platforms out there:

• LÖVE is an *awesome* framework you can use to make 2D games in Lua. It's free, open-source, and works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Stencyl: Design Once, Play Anywhere. Publish iPhone, iPad, Android, Flash, Windows & Mac games without code
• Torque 2D is a powerful, flexible, and fast open source engine dedicated to 2D game development.
• Allegro: A mature, battle-tested C/C++ game framework with multiple platform support

CodeProject