So I’ve decided against using Ruby/Chingu. So that leaves AS3/Flixel…

But I’ve stumbled across Impact, a HTML5 Canvas game library. I’ve always been a bit skeptical about using HTML5 and Javascript for serious game development, but admittedly I hadn’t really looked into it for a long while. But looking at recent examples… I’m very impressed.

As a web developer I work with Javascript every day, so being able to make half-decent games with it would be great. It would also mean that I can implement, for example, online leaderboards and game saves, extremely easily. I know this is easily possible with other languages and frameworks out there, but being able to use Javascript and Ruby/Rails on the server side makes it trivial for me. (I’ve probably just stated the obvious for you HTML5 game dev buffs out there… but oh well)

So, back to Impact. It costs about £60 ($99 to be exact) for a licence, so I bought the Kindle version of ‘Introducing HTML5 Game Development’ (which is based on Impact) for £6 to see if it’s something I’d like. It’s only 103 pages and I’ve got most of the way through already, but from what I can gather from this book, Impact looks brilliant!

So right now, it’s a toss up between AS3/Flixel and JS/Impact. And I think Impact is winning…