WOW! I'm Very Impressed! - Stencyl Essentials

Just finished reading Stencyl Essentials by Richard Sneyd (pick it up at Packt or Amazon). I was a bit wary about yet another game creation tool that touted no coding necessary in order to create high quality games for iOS, Android, desktop, etc. So, I read this book and I'm happy to say that I'm very glad I did. Richard Sneyd has done an impressive job at creating a very fast, yet simple to grasp introduction and implementation of a full 2D side-scroller game. In particularl, he gives detail where detail is appropriate in order to help the user understand the "why", and then lays out the "how" in very easy to understand terms. The detail does not come in a lot of vast technical explanations about the underlying system, but rather very well placed analogies that, in my opinion, really helped me understand the tools; after-all, I think that's the whole point of the book (It gives you a well founded explanation of the essential ingredients in order to create a high quality and fun to play game). I had no idea Stencyl was such a powerful tool.
I highly recommend this book to anyone - beginner to expert. Though an expert game developer probably would not opt to use Stencyl since they would surely have their own framework setup already, this book really does a great job of convincing me to use Stencyl for some of my 2D games, and I will be using it. Thanks Richard!

Mastering Cocos2d Game Development - Great For Creating Your First Game Dev Pipeline

I just read "Mastering Cocos2d Game Development" and I was pleasantly surprised. (Get it at Packt or Amazon)
I'm impressed by the historical information the book gives you about other tools that are used to support a cocos2d pipeline. The first few chapters do a great job of giving the reader all the info they need to quickly and efficiently get a game framework up and running and out into testers hands for prototyping. The code examples are all for the most part clear and understandable for anyone familiar with objective-c/c++, but someone new to the language should also be able to learn how to write code using the same examples as long as they are not completely new to programming. Each line of code is not always discussed so if you are unfamiliar with objective-c, it may be best to review the basics in another book/resource first. There are plenty of visual diagrams and references that help the reader understand what is being discussed - this is a great benefit. The author also take special consideration that not everyone will be using the same workflow, so alternatives are given in these situations - which is a welcome benefit of this book.
I recommend this book for devs that want to get an app into the market fast, but the draw back is that the app being designed is not a 3D game or even a 2D side-scroller. Though the book does show examples of 3D games (Crossy Road, etc.) and does talk about elements of a 2D side-scroller, it really only covers 2D static playing fields (board game style) and does a good job of it. I must, however, add that the book adds polishing effects such as parallax scrolling for dept perception. This is all very cool and extremely helpful for creating a board game style app that helps the user feel like it's a bit 3-dimensional. All the setup and framework is still incredibly helpful even for 2D side-scrollers, but it's really teaching you a board game type of playing field.
In conclusion, If you need to learn how to create a board game style app for iOS, then I highly recommend it. If you are creating a side-scroller or 3D game, then this may be a good reference for setting up the basic framework and other tools that help create 2D graphics. But you will not finish this book with a working knowledge of how to create other style games.