Stencyl

Making video games is far easier now than it was a few years ago, but it’s still not as simple as baking muffins, or chasing snails uphill, which appears to be the goal. With all the tools that are available nowadays to eager developers, it’s no wonder that the indie market is booming, while some triple-A titles from respectable studios struggle to get a return on the overall investment. Hence, there’s always room for one more game creator, especially in the mobile gaming division.

Stencyl is the type of application that seems to be powered by a sweatshop somewhere under the hood, because its purpose is to rapidly output simple video games on a variety of platforms, with minimum amount of work or knowledge required. As such, whether you have never seen a line of code before, or you are just in too much of a rush and the final product doesn’t need to be that complex anyway, this may very well be the answer to your prayers.

To start off with, everything has been automated and simplified, starting with the layout of the editor, all the way to the code itself, because you can avoid the sight of variables throughout the journey. Drag-and-drop functionality has been integrated into everything and the keyboard barely enters the picture during the development phase. Naturally, if you choose to take a bit more control over the process, things can get a tad more complex as well.

As previously mentioned, the code is virtually non-existent, unless you really want to deal with it. Otherwise, you can use the handy drag-and-drop programming language integrated into the application. This makes use of blocks and you can actually position the statements by dragging them around with the mouse in order to obtain the desired sequence of commands and events.

After you are done tweaking your creation and you are confident that it can find a purpose on the market, the editor also allows you to easily publish it on a variety of online stores. Hence, whether you are targeting iOS users and you want to see your game in the App Store, or you need to put the Android version on Google Play, everything is handled inside the editor and it only takes a couple of clicks.

While it’s certainly not as powerful as Unity, Stencyl does have a unique purpose on the game editor market, mostly because it is aimed toward those who want to create casual games for the mobile market. Hence, if that sounds like what you would like to do, then this is definitely the way to go, especially if you have limited experience in the field.