I didn’t get much work done this weekend, but in the previous days, I went through several demos for game creation software in an effort to try and choose a platform for game-design in my GDS Challenge. In the end, I found that they all will need more of a time investment to get really good with but, for now at least, I’m going with Construct 2 because it allows me to take my development on the road. Here are a few demos:
Phaser IO
The Phaser tutorial was really nice and I liked that they not only game you tutorial files but they showed you some other important game ideas like scoring. Development was fairly simple and output is HTML5.
Stencyl
Stencyl development was a little more difficult but I really like the layout of the workspace and game files. It’s really easy for me to find where everything is. Output (for an unpaid version at least) is a nicely compact flash file which makes it really easy to transport because you don’t have to worry about losing anything.
Construct 2
Construct 2 probably gave me the most trouble development-wise and I’m not a huge fan of the workspace and game files layout. However, the output is really nice-looking HTML5 that seems to be responsive to window size, which makes it a great option for embedding in Storyline. The best thing, though, is that the program can be installed on a portable drive, allowing me to take game development with me, instead of being tied to one computer. The tutorial files were a little less helpful than Stencyl or Phaser IO but I’m (very, very slowly) getting the hang of it. Still, I don’t expect that my GDS Challenge will be anything remarkable.
