Programming-only tools are generally easier if you want to do procedurally generated stuff, gameplay patterns that don't exist yet, etc... Engines are easier i

Programming-only tools are generally easier if you want to do procedurally generated stuff, gameplay patterns that don't exist yet, etc... Engines are easier if you're making a more common genre of game and are hand-placing assets, creating levels, etc... Also Heaps is written in Haxe which is a nice GC'd language that compiles down to C++ so you get a good combination of development speed and runtime speed. Is Heaps better? Probably not. But there's definitely a specific type of dev who would prefer this kind of tool.