2. Stencyl
2. Stencyl
Stencyl is a highly valued program but that could also be due to good marketing campaign. You can make games and publish them on the web for free but using more advanced options like publishing for desktop or mobile platforms gets more expensive. Once again this is an annual payment method which can get expensive for a hobby user.
Tutorial
Tutorial is pretty straight forward and you are making a simple run&jump game with a couple of characters with minimum interaction. Included is a art editor Pencyl which you can use to make you're own game art. If you're not making a simple game like the one shown below then the tutorial will not really give you a lot of information. As there are many options for behaviors there is a lot of information to go through and that is readily available.
Interface
Interface is very interesting as coding is puzzle like where the shapes tell you what fits together. After time it should get easier to use it but at the beginning it can be a bit confusing if you're not used to stuff like this. As seen above you have a tile palette which you use to build your levels.
Behaviors
Behavior is the main part of defining your characters and it seems pretty straight forward. There is a screen on the left where all the behaviors are listed and there is picture next to it for easier recognition. Additionally there are tabs for appearance, events, collision, physics and properties of each actor/character that you can define here.
Pricing
Not sure what to think of pricing in case of Stencyl as basically you're limited to platform 2d games so if you're not planing to build any of those I'd rather spend my money on something more versatile. On the other hand if you wish to make game for web or desktop platform it will cost you 99$ a year. This does not seem to much if you plan to earn from games in the future. Mobile is of course as usual more expensive and you can get it at 199$ a year so building a game without monetizing it in this case might be a bit pricey for you.
Showcase
Sifting through the games on their site I could not really find any good examples of what I'm after. It's hard to judge a game by the graphic design and there are plenty of them on the web as that is the free versions only option so anyone will make a game with that. I'm open to changes to the final score but Stencyl is not offering what I'm looking for so the score is pretty low on that note.
Score
There will always be an influence of my opinion to the final score so do mind that in these reviews as they progress. Anyway Stencyl looks fine for a beginner and as with other programs you will need some time to figure it out. If you're into a platformed 2d games it can be a place to start especially if you plan on only doing those. Then it's worth investing into the program and some additional resources. Otherwise it makes sense to search for a more suitable one for you.
Difficulty: 9
Literature: 9
Cost: 4
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Overall score: 5