2D cross-platform game engine for Android and iOS

Question

I ve worked for some time with Unity3d and found it s 2D part with OnGUI   or GUITextures too clumsy  Also  even a smallest game done on Unity3d is at least 10MB download which is just too much for a 2D game    So  I m currently looking for an engine for 2D  I ve tried Cocos2D but it s iOS only and I wouldn t like to rewrite everything into another language for Android  so  e g  Java port of Cocos2d for Android is not an option   Instead  I want to write the code once and with least hassle deploy it on iOS  Android and possibly Windows Phone 7  I have both Mac and Windows   Just to be more detailed  here are my requirements to the engine     must be cross-platform  must be efficient should be C    Java  C  or Objective C since I m comfortable with them and NOT Flash  Javascript  HTML5 since I am not a web developer must have a large community  tutorials  additional libraries which cover most of the stuff you d have when developing on iOS or Android directly  in-app billing  facebook etc    the final delivered package must be not too large the engine can be free  but I also wouldn t mind paying a reasonable price    I ve found the following engines    Marmalade  and IwGame engine on top of it  - C    found overall very positive reviews of Marmalade but not sure about IwGame  EDIT  March 2013   Looks like Marmalade SDK now includes Cocos2Dx and some in-built IDE which makes it much better  and costs  150 per year for indie dev which is ok with me   Corona SDK - Lua  efficiency doubtful   also needs internet connection to compile code Cocos2d-x - C    received lots of reviews from developers  mostly positive and many think it s best for 2D Particle code - Java Eclipse  found no reviews or comments Moai - Lua  coudn t find any reviews opinions on it Monkey engine - seems to have too few features Haxenme - it s Flash  I ve never used it and don t want to use Unity3d but with 2D packages like 2D Toolkit ports of SDL to Android  also here  and iOS - doesn t look to have much support or current development     GLBasic - Basic language  I don t like it playN - seems to be early in development     Gamvas - HTML5  doesn t look like a mature engine to me Ignifuga - Python  also doesn t look mature ORX - not sure if it s still developed     Construct 2 - reminds GameMaker  might be ok for rapid prototypes but definitely not for industry-level games XNA and then port the game using ExEn  would need Mono Touch to port to iOS and Mono for Android to port to Android  - C   and is probably more thought for folks coming from Microsoft products like xBox  I come from Android   Also  those Mono tools cost  800 in total for small developers Impact - JavaScript  uses HTML5  I m not much into JavaScript  e g  preferred C  on Unity3d   also not sure about efficiency since it runs in the browser     GameMaker - own scripting language GML and I actually remember this one as a tool for non-programmers  Has it actually grown into a real engine  I mean for serious development  AppGameKit - C    yet seems to be still pretty new  Haven t found any reviews on it use Cocos2D and Objective C to develop for iOS only and then make an APK for Android out of it using Stella SDK  Has anyone done this  I m pretty sure there will be limitations  and how about Google s in-app billing  AdMob and Facebook integration on Android  Moscrif - JavaScript  looks like it s more for former web-developers Starling - Flash 11  i m not much into Flash ND2D - not yet 1 0  does it have many features    So  I d be happy if you could comment from your experiences with the engines and suggest which one in the list  or anything else that I ve missed  is the best for the described requirements  I also may be wrong with my first impressions about some of the engines   I m currently thinking of Marmalade IwGame as the best option but since I don t have much info about Cocos2d-x and Particle code  I am not really sure about it   Thank you   EDIT  June 2013   So far I made 2 cross-platform 2D games and used Unity3D with 2D Toolkit plugin for both  For the game with simple GUI I used a simple self-made GUI system based on Unity s own  For more complex one  e g  where GUI elements can overlap  I used the NGUI plugin  Recently 2D Toolkit added some more classes for GUI which is very handy since one had to use 2 different systems for texture atlases when combining NGUI with 2D Toolkit  I ll definitely try that one in the next 2D game  The main reason for choosing Unity3D for 2D games was that I already was deep into Unity3D both in terms of experience and accumulated code snippets for re-use  Also  I purchased Unity3D pro  with Android Pro and iOS Pro  for 3D games and it made full sense to just pay additional  60 for the 2D Toolkit to get 2D games also covered  I so far don t regret my decision  it seems to have been optimal for my case  The only thing which gave me headache was adding social features with the Prime31 s plugins  Android  amp  iOS social plugins  but I assume that their bugs are not the fault of Prime31 but of Twitter Facebook instead  so I probably would see the same bugs on any other engine or plugin   EDIT  Jan 2014   I guess with Unity 4 3 the answer to my question is pretty obvious now  the Unity s new sprites system and maybe also 2DToolkit totally beat anything else  especially for people who have  like me  been on Unity for a while and purchased the Pro version with add-ons

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I find a nice and tidy Wave game engine few days ago  It uses C  and have Windows Phone and Windows Store converters as well which makes it a great replacement of XNA for me

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Recently I used an AS3 engine  PushButton  now is dead  but it s still functional and you could use something else  to do this job  To make it works with Android and iOS  the project was compiled in AIR for both platforms and everything worked with no performance damage  Since Flash Builder is kinda expensive   249   you could use FlashDevelop  there is some tutorials to compile in AIR with it    Flash could be an option since is very easy to learn

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You mention Haxe NME but you seem to instinctively dislike it  However  my experience with it has been very positive  Sure  the API is a reimplementation of the Flash API  but you re not limited to targeting Flash  you can also compile to HTML5 or native Windows  Mac  iOS and Android apps  Haxe is a pleasant  modern language similar to Java or C    If you re interested  I ve written a bit about my experience using Haxe NME  link

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V-Play  v-play net  is a cross-platform game engine based on Qt QML  with many useful V-Play QML game components for handling multiple display resolutions  amp  aspect ratios  animations  particles  physics  multi-touch  gestures  path finding and more  API reference The engine core is written in native C    combined with the custom renderer  the games reach a solid performance of 60fps across all devices   V-Play also comes with ready-to-use game templates for the most successful game genres like tower defense  platform games or puzzle games   If you are curious about games made with V-Play  here is a quick selection of them    Squaby  a tower defense game Chicken Outbreak  a platformer like Doodle Jump Blockoban  puzzle game Crazy Elephant  a game similar to Angry Birds Snowball Mania  multiplayer action game Blitzkopf  brain game    Disclaimer  I m one of the guys behind V-Play

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I ve worked with Marmalade and I found it satisfying  Although it s not free and the developer community is also not large enough  but still you can handle most of the task using it s tutorials   I ll write my tutorials once I got some times too   IwGame is a good engine  developed by one of the Marmalade user  It s good for a basic game  but if you are looking for some serious advanced gaming stuff  you can also use Cocos2D-x with Marmalade  I ve never used Cocos2D-x  but there s an Extension on Marmalade s Github  Another good thing about Marmalade is it s EDK  Extension Development Kit   which lets you make an extension for whatever functionality you need which is available in native code  but not in Marmalade  I ve used it to develop my own Customized Admob extension and a Facebook extension too   Edit  Marmalade now has it s own RAD Rapid Application Development  tool just for 2D development  named as Marmalade Quick  Although the coding will be in Lua not in C    but since it s built on top of C   Marmalade  you can easily include a C   library  and all other EDK extensions  Also the Cocos-2Dx and Box2D extensions are preincluded in the Quick  They recently launched it s Release version  It was in beta for 3-4 months   I think we you re really looking for only 2D development  you should give it a try   Update  Unity3D recently launched support for 2D games  which seems better than any other 2D game engine  due to it s GUI and Editor  Physics  sprite etc support is inbuilt  You can have a look on it   Update 2 Marmalade is going to discontinue their SDK in favor of their in-house game production soon  So it won t be a wise decision to rely on that

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I ve tried AppGameKit  It s both c   and Basic  It s very easy to code 2d games in the Basic varient  with physics  collision and heaps more  It s also in active development  and really cheap  65    The main problem is that it s really hard to compile for Android  you need to download heaps of files and follow difficult guides and things like that  My opinion is that it isn t yet good enough for commercial use  but is good for indie programmers It s got a medium size community

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Check out Loom  http   theengine co  is a new cross platform 2D game engine featuring hot swapping code  amp  assets on devices  This means that you can work in Photoshop on your assets  you can update your code  modify the UI of your app game and then see the changes on your device s  while the app is running   Thinking to the other cross platform game engines I   ve heard of or even played with  the Loom Game Engine is by far the best in my oppinion with lots of great features  Most of the other similar game engines  Corona SDK  MOAI SDK  Gideros Mobile  are Lua based  with an odd syntax  at least for me   The Loom Game Engine uses LoomScripts  a scripting language inspired from ActionScript 3  with a couple of features borrowed from C   If you ever developed in ActionScript 3  C  or Java  LoomScript will look familiar to you  and I   m more comfortable with this syntax than with Lua   s syntax    The 1 year license for the Loom Game Engine costs  500  and I think it   s an affordable price for any indie game developer  Couple of weeks ago the offered a 1 year license for free too  After the license expires  you can still use Loom to create and deploy your own games  but you won   t get any further updates  The creators of  Loom are very confident and they promised to constantly improve their baby making it worthwile to purchase another license   Without further ado  here are Loom   s great features    Cross platform  iOS  Android  OS X  Windows  Linux Ubuntu  Rails-inspired workflow lets you spend your time working with your game  one command to create a new project  and another command to run it  Fast compiler Live code and assets editing Possibility to integrate third party libraries Uses Cocos2DX for rendering XML  JSON support LML  markup language  and CSS for styling UI elements UI library Dependency injection Unit test framework Chipmunk physics Seeing your changes live makes multidevice development easy Small download size Built for teams   You can find more videos about Loom here  http   www youtube com user LoomEngine feature watch  Check out this 4 part in-depth tutorial too  http   www gamefromscratch com post 2013 02 28 A-closer-look-at-the-Loom-game-engine-Part-one-getting-started aspx

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I currently use Corona for business applications with great success  As far as games go  I m under the impression that it doesn t provide the performance that some of the other cross-platform development engines do  It is worth noting that Carlos  founder of Ansca Mobile Corona SDK  has started another company on a competing engine  Lanica Platino Engine for Appcelerator Titanium  While I haven t worked with this personally  it does look promising  Keep in mind  however  that it comes with a  999 yr price tag   All that said  I have been researching Moai for a little while now  since I am already familiar with Lua syntax  and it does seem promising  The fact that it can compile for multiple platforms  not limited to mobile environments  is appealing    Multimedia Fusion 2 is also a worth contender  considering the complexity of games produced and the performance realized from them  Vincere Totus Astrum  http   gamesare com  comes to mind

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LibGDX is one of the best engines I ve ever used  works on almost all platforms  and performs twice as fast as cocos2d-x in most tests I ve done  You can use any JVM language you like  Here s a 13 part tutorial in Java  and here s a bunch using jruby  There s a good skeletal animation tool that works with it here  and it has baked in support for tiled TMX maps as well  The ui framework is awesome  and it has a scene graph and actor style API similar to cocos2d scenes  sprites and actions  The community is awesome  updates are frequent  and the documentation is good  Don t let the java part scare you  it s fast  and you can use jruby or scala or whatever you like  I highly recommend it for 2d or 3d work  it supports both

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and what about LibGDX from BadLogicGames

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Here is just a reply from Richard Pickup on LinkedIn to a similar question of mine       I ve used cocos 2dx marmalade and unity on both iOS and android  For   2d games cocos2dx is the way to go every time  Unity is just too much   overkill for 2d games and as already stated marmalade is just a thin   abstraction layer not really a game engine  You can even run cocos2d   on top of marmalade  My approach would be to use cocos2dx on iOS and   android then in future run cocosd2dx code on top of marmalade as an   easy way to port to bb10 and win phone 7

[android] 2D cross-platform game engine for Android and iOS?

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