I&#39;ve worked for some time with Unity3d and found it&#39;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&#39;m currently looking for an engine for 2D. I&#39;ve tried Cocos2D but it&#39;s iOS only and I wouldn&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;t mind paying a reasonable price 

I&#39;ve found the following engines:

 - [Marmalade][1] (and [IwGame engine][2] 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][3] - Lua (efficiency doubtful), also needs internet connection to compile code
 - [Cocos2d-x][4] - C++, received lots of reviews from developers, mostly positive and many think it&#39;s best for 2D
 - [Particle code][5] - Java+Eclipse, found no reviews or comments
 - [Moai][6] - Lua, coudn&#39;t find any reviews/opinions on it
 - [Monkey engine][7] - seems to have too few features
 - [Haxenme][8] - it&#39;s Flash, I&#39;ve never used it and don&#39;t want to
 - use [Unity3d][9] but with 2D packages like 2D Toolkit
 - ports of [SDL][10] to [Android][11] (also [here][12]) and [iOS][13] - doesn&#39;t look to have much support or current development (?)
 - [GLBasic][14] - Basic language, I don&#39;t like it
 - [playN][15] - seems to be early in development (?)
 - [Gamvas][16] - HTML5, doesn&#39;t look like a mature engine to me
 - [Ignifuga][17] - Python, also doesn&#39;t look mature
 - [ORX][18] - not sure if it&#39;s still developed (?)
 - [Construct 2][19] - reminds GameMaker, might be ok for rapid prototypes but definitely not for industry-level games
 - [XNA][20] and then port the game using [ExEn][21] (would need [Mono Touch][22] to port to iOS and [Mono for Android][23] 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][24] - JavaScript, uses HTML5. I&#39;m not much into JavaScript (e.g. preferred C# on Unity3d), also not sure about efficiency since it runs in the browser (?)
 - [GameMaker][25] - 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][26] - C++, yet seems to be still pretty new. Haven&#39;t found any reviews on it
 - use [Cocos2D][27] and Objective C to develop for iOS only and then make an APK for Android out of it using [Stella SDK][28]. Has anyone done this? I&#39;m pretty sure there will be limitations, and how about Google&#39;s in-app billing, AdMob and Facebook integration on Android?
 - [Moscrif][29] - JavaScript, looks like it&#39;s more for former web-developers
 - [Starling][30] - Flash 11, i&#39;m not much into Flash
 - [ND2D][31] - not yet 1.0, does it have many features?

So, I&#39;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&#39;ve missed) is the best for the described requirements. I also may be wrong with my first impressions about some of the engines.

I&#39;m currently thinking of Marmalade+IwGame as the best option but since I don&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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.

  [1]: http://www.madewithmarmalade.com/marmaladesdk
  [2]: http://www.drmop.com/index.php/iwgame-engine/
  [3]: http://www.coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/
  [4]: http://www.cocos2d-x.org/
  [5]: http://www.particlecode.com/features/core-api/
  [6]: http://getmoai.com/products/sdk/
  [7]: http://jmonkeyengine.com/
  [8]: http://www.haxenme.org/
  [9]: http://unity3d.com/
  [10]: http://www.libsdl.org/
  [11]: http://www.anddev.org/sdl_port_for_android_sdk-ndk_16-t9218.html
  [12]: http://forums.libsdl.org/viewtopic.php?t=6471&amp;sid=e8752d0c482fa77a95243b9210c9e33c
  [13]: http://immersedcode.org/2011/4/25/sdl-on-ios/
  [14]: http://www.glbasic.com/
  [15]: http://code.google.com/p/playn/
  [16]: http://gamvas.com/
  [17]: http://ignifuga.org/features/
  [18]: http://orx-project.org/about
  [19]: http://www.scirra.com/construct2/event-editor
  [20]: https://dev.windowsphone.com/en-us/downloadsdk
  [21]: http://andrewrussell.net/exen/
  [22]: http://xamarin.com/monotouch
  [23]: http://xamarin.com/monoforandroid
  [24]: http://impactjs.com/
  [25]: http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/studio
  [26]: http://www.appgamekit.com/
  [27]: http://cocos2d.org/
  [28]: http://www.yeecco.com/stella
  [29]: http://moscrif.com/why-moscrif
  [30]: http://gamua.com/starling/features/
  [31]: http://www.nulldesign.de/

All Marmalade Solutions on Gang of Coders

Total of 1 Marmalade Solutions

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