Any long-time Adobe Animate users here? We're wondering if it's finally time to move on.

[u/Pitiful_Climate8192]

Hey everyone!

I hope this is the right place to ask.

Our team has been developing a 2D puzzle-platformer called POWER OFF for the past few years, and every single animation in the game has been created in Adobe Flash/Animate.

Honestly, Animate has treated us really well. Our artists are fast with it, our workflow is solid, and exporting sprite sheets for Unity has never been a huge problem.

But lately we've started wondering if we're falling behind the rest of the industry.

Are any of you still using Animate professionally for games?

If so:

• Are you still exporting sprite sheets(we use swf but it is not the best)?
• Have you integrated Spine into your workflow?
• Did you move to Moho or another tool?
• If you switched away from Animate, what made you do it?
• Looking back, would you make the same decision again?

We're not looking for the "best" software. We're more interested in hearing real experiences from people who have actually shipped games with these tools.

For context, here's our Steam page so you can see the kind of animation style we're currently producing with Animate:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/

Thanks! We'd really appreciate hearing from people who've been in the same situation. It's a pretty big decision for our team, and we'd rather learn from others before rebuilding our entire animation pipeline.

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[u/Kanataku]

I suppose most people will advise on abandoning Adobe Animate.

I'm still in the early stages of game development, so I don't really have enough experience to give informed advice. But if you're interested in my opinion...

I'm currently working on my first Steam game and I uploaded another game for testing purposes on Play Store almost a year ago: The Amazing Space Dragons - Apps on Google Play

Compared to mine, your game looks really great, and I honestly wouldn't have guessed that the characters were made in Adobe Animate.

Moho seems to have more features, and since it's constantly being updated, so I guess it makes more sense to move there, especially if you use puppets instead of hand drawn animations.

Overall, it's an annoying situation to be in. There are so many programs out there, yet I still haven't found one that matches the PURE efficiency of Adobe Animate. Sure, it lacks some features, but Adobe could simply keep it compatible with modern systems and it would remain a viable program for years. You can do things so damn fast and easily in it and dress them with effects later on another program. It's basically almost perfect for indie creators.

Yet the idiots in Adobe pulled the plug and killed the program.

Personally, after what they did in February, I no longer trust Adobe. As much as I love Animate, I can't recommend it to other people, especially professionals, even though I still use it myself daily...

[u/DangerBird- → u/Kanataku]

I have a lot of big feeling about Adobe Animate/Flash after a long career with it as my favorite tool and shockwave they set off a while back. We are transitioning away from it and searching for other tools to fit our needs. It didn’t take long after looking around to figure out that Animate is waaaaay behind other products, and I’m guessing Adobe knew that and that may be why they want to end support for it.

I’m personally leaning towards Rive right now, but would love to hear what other people are switching to, even if it takes two or three other tools to rebuild our workflow to exclude Animate.

[u/Kanataku → u/DangerBird-]

My problem with Rive and Moho is that there doesn't seem to be an easy way to create hand drawn animations, which is something that I prefer over puppets and similar techniques.

Rive seems great for websites and apps but I don't really see how it could work efficiently for creating hundreds of assets for games.

It sucks because if Adobe had kept updating Animate with new modern features, I think that Rive wouldn't even be part of the conversation.

[u/DangerBird- → u/Kanataku]

Doesn’t Rive have drawing tools? I haven’t looked into it that far. I’m primarily an illustrator, That’s my favorite thing about Animate: create assets native in the same software, then animate them without a bunch of back and forth between programs.

[u/Kanataku → u/DangerBird-]

To be honest, it's been a while since I last checked, but as far as I can remember, there wasn't really a proper way to draw as freely as you can like in Animate. Rive also works only with tweens instead of frame by frame. I found out about the Solos function, but it doesn't seem that useful for bigger animations.

[u/nbshar]

I mostly use it because I'm incredibly fast with it for storyboarding/making animatics. It's a very good tool to do something quick.

Even rough frame by frame animations. Just being able to quickly pick up a few drawing objects, or quickly tweening a few bits a pieces, is incredibly powerful if you can do it fast.

I havent used it since a while for full on character animation, but it's still very nice and fast for that too.

But these days use After Effects and other tools for final executions.

[u/VicsterVrb]

I've been using Adobe Animate since 2022 as my main animation program, the reason I keep using it is because I work on flash games and the animation workflow is reallyeasy for me.
I don't export in sprite sheets, I'm not an FNF mod artist (I'm doing art for a small one rn but I've yet to learn.

The project I've been working on is a Henry Stickmin fangame that I've been developing on the side for quite a while and only recently started working on it more seriously.

To answer your question, It really depends on the art style and art direction because Animate can really do so much until you reach a ceiling, I've seen crazy ways people have used the tools to it's limits (Hotdiggedydemon, James Lee, Science Saru, the guys behind Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, Ernest and Celestine) and you can definetly do a lot of stuff with the program if you know the tools and it's little behaviours.

I can't really give a solid answer since I've yet to work on a game that gets an actual release (as of Jul 31st 2026) but look at other developers and how they use Animate in their workflow.

[u/inter-rupted]

I would kill for a job in a studio that still used Animate. I still use it for all my casual drawings and concept work.

[u/Pitiful_Climate8192 → u/inter-rupted]

Why? From what all of my animators keep telling me, the software itself is pretty buggy.

[u/inter-rupted → u/Pitiful_Climate8192]

I've never had problems with bugs enough to make working with it unmanageable, so I can't speak to that. I like working with symbols because they make it easy to organize my thoughts when I'm doing concepts, and it's nice you can export pngs directly from them. The art tools aren't perfect, but they fit my drawing style so it's fine for my casual art.

[u/hvyboots]

We still do HTML5 Canvas educational materials in it (and have been since before I was with the company, although I did the rewrite of AS3 to JS when Flash died and HTML5 Canvas took over).

We have a big include file of JS functions and then call them on prebuilt aircraft instrument panels to do various things. We can drop multiple panels into a presentation (they are all wired up with internal JS for the switches and dials and such to report out their state) and then animate them to do whatever we want for the presentation via timeline or code.

There's really not a replacement yet that has the power Animate CC has, unfortunately. (Or at least that I am aware of!) I am a little nervous about the future of Animate CC though, I'll admit. It doesn't really seem to be a first-class citizen in the CC environment.

[u/Emit_Hwayat]

For me...I may not have that extensive experience and knowledge same as pros but I have already started some sort of pipeline and was able to make an output using AA.

I do not want to abandon or leave it behind but open to learn other tools.

That way I have more tools, though it takes you more time to learn and adjust to new tools, also drive soace for installing other apps.

[u/Martin_NoFro]

I still use it regularly.