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Phaser vs Unity: What are the differences?
What is Phaser? Desktop and Mobile HTML5 game framework. It is a free open source HTML5 game framework. It uses Pixi.js for WebGL and Canvas rendering across desktop and mobile web browsers. Games can be compiled to iOS and Android apps via 3rd party tools.
What is Unity? Unity brings state-of-the-art, affordable multiplatform tools and services to developers of interactive content everywhere. Unity is the ultimate game development platform. Use Unity to build high-quality 3D and 2D games, deploy them across mobile, desktop, VR/AR, consoles or the Web, and connect with loyal and enthusiastic players and customers.
Phaser and Unity can be primarily classified as "Game Development" tools.
Phaser is an open source tool with 25.3K GitHub stars and 5.98K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Phaser's open source repository on GitHub.
Zappiti, Sinoze, and AppsFlyer are some of the popular companies that use Unity, whereas Phaser is used by Bitgap, eClick Apps, and Jan Ziemba. Unity has a broader approval, being mentioned in 67 company stacks & 123 developers stacks; compared to Phaser, which is listed in 5 company stacks and 18 developer stacks.
When I started to learn game development, I've tried to use Unity multiple times because it's the most popular option. But never get it worked because of the clunky UI which is very hard to understand for a new user. After some time, I've decided to try UE4 despite there was a lot of rumors that it's "heavy" or requires an AAA team. And suddenly it clicked, everything works as I expecting, UI is clear and much more powerfull, no need to build custom tools to work on the game itself. Blueprints are very helpful for beginners, C++ has a lot of "syntax-sugar" - macroses, a lot of convenient in-engine types for everything. Later while working with Unreal, I've realized it has very consistent roadmap with constant improvements and adding new features. At the same time, each major version update is painless so you can upgrade your project during development to get new features. UE4 is free to use with the full list of features and you only have to pay royalty after getting your first $1 million from the project (and that's just the default case, you can always discuss custom license with an upfront fee, if you want to).
I chose Unity over Unreal Engine because Unity has a more user friendly UI for beginners looking to learn game development. Additionally, as someone who uses a lot of online resources to learn new languages and tools, I found a lot of tutorials covering game development with Unity as the core engine. This doesn't mean Unreal is not a great choice for game development, I just personally found learning game development much smoother with the amount of resources available with Unity.
Pros of Phaser
- Compile to iOS, Android and native apps1
- JavaScript or TypeScript1
- WebGL and Canvas rendering1
- Open Source1
Pros of Unity
- Because it's a powerful engine, you can build anything16
- C# language14
- Very Popular11
- Easy to Use7
- He Has A Free VErsion6
- Cross Platform6
- 2nd Game Engine In The World5
- Good Choise4
- Very Large Showcase4
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Cons of Phaser
- No GUI3
Cons of Unity
- Hard to get started with4
- Clunky UI4
- Closed source4
- No consistency with updates3
- Requires to build a lot of tools3
- Gigantic by being 9gb (thats what setup says)2