Updated July 31, 2020 – Originally written about Corona SDK, but that game dev framework has been renamed as Solar2D. My opinion hasn’t changed, even though I’ve created many more games in both since then.
Q. I see you do tutorials for both Solar2D and Unity. If I’m just wanting to create 2D games, which do you recommend?
A. I get this question often and I HATE it — because there is no easy answer! 🙂
Unity gives you the option of doing 3D stuff if you ever want to do that, and it can build for more platforms, but the Solar2D learning curve is SOOO much smaller it’s not even a contest. You’ll get going faster with Solar2D than just about anything and it builds for Win/Mac desktop, tvOS, and iOS/Android mobile, so it covers all the majors.
Unless there’s a compelling reason why you need Unity now, I’d say start with Solar2D. You can always switch later and while the code itself doesn’t transfer, the general game making techniques are the same no matter what you use.
I could go into a whole list of pros and cons, but there really is no wrong answer, so just have fun with whichever you decide on. 🙂
Jay
I second that ‘general game making techniques are the same’ comment. We have switched between a few technically quite different gamedev platforms. The artwork you have is obviously transferable, but also the general flow of how a game operates is the same everywhere. Once you’ve understood one then the next is a lot quicker to pick up!