Language/Program for simple 2D animation

I want to write something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S4KpCkHDqM I mean, I want to have 2D gaming space, but to have stylized as 3D, so my cha开发者_高级运维racters will move on the surface, but will have nice 3D effect. I wounder if Flash/ActionScript will do? Any other suggestions?

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Flash and Actionscript can definitely accomplish this. There are at least 2 ways to accomplish the 3D look in 2D space.

The easiest is to do as @Blender said in the comments. Render some 3D images and bring them into flash. There are easy tools in flash to create animated sprites, including a native movieClip class, that has a timeline to play back frame-based animation.

But there is also full 3D in flash. You can bring low-polygon 3D models into flash easily using free and open source libraries such as Away3d (away3d.org) and papervision (papervision3d.org). Presently, flash player 10 has runs slowly when using these libraries.

But Adobe is about to release a new version of the player (version 11) that supports open GL for 3D and has significant performance improvements. Away3D and papervision have already developed version of their libraries to support the new beta player and openGL.

So to summarize, yes - flash can make a game like that. It is currently the best way to develop games that are intended to be played in a browser. Because at least for the time being it has the most widespread support, and is stable between platforms and browsers.

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Your example is pretty much entirely 2D: it just uses effects like shadows, animation and parallax scrolling between layers to achieve a (mildly) 3D effect.

As Plastic Sturgeon and Blender have pointed out, Blender might help for creating your assets - but it has a pretty steep learning curve, and you might be more comfortable 'faking it' in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop if you've used those before.

Once you've created your assets, you need a platform to put together your gameplay: Flash is one possibility, but you could also look at Unity3D, which has good support for 2D and 3D, and has a browser plug-in if you want to make your game web-based.

If you're looking for a java-based solution, you could try Processing, which is cross-platform, and can export to javascript for web deployment. It's not exactly designed as a gaming environment, but it might do the trick - and it's free.

Hope this helps.