I like Unity a lot because its very reliable, powerful, and the management system is great.

As far as learning C# I can't really say it took a lot of time. learning how to program is not like a gathering of a mass amount of knowledge, its more like learning math in that you learn how to organize equations and process them. Once you get that down then get to work with the API documentation open (think encyclopedia) for the tools you are using. It's not a cakewalk but it was far more easy then I imagined it would be. I do credit Construct a lot for breaking the ice and getting me introduced to logic.

I personally never published a mobile game with Unity but that will change in a month or so.

I have both a Construct and Unity version of my current project which has an animated ocean I created with a solid blue background and a wave animation done with a single sprite that moves horizontal and fades in and out, once faded out the sprite moves to a random location and fades in again, this gives me an ocean that always looks different. The Construct APK is no where near as smooth as the Unity APK and in order for the game to look good that ocean must be smooth, so I devoted that game to Unity and it will be my first Unity game published to mobile. I must say it was a bummer because I was excited to use Construct's mobile build service which makes it much easier to build an APK but that's how things go, no engine is flawless, so when building a game you must take every available tool into consideration. At your level I would just focus on Construct because I really think APK's will not be the most desired way to build games in the near future. I only do it so I have access to ad mob.

I think it's important to go with the tools that help you get the most done in the least amount of time while factoring in reliability.

Yes you use C# in Unity but here's the thing, code to the untrained eye looks really intimidating but its the logic and creative aspects of working with data and optimizing the flow of data that's actually the hard part.

What makes Construct so cool is the fact that event sheets have you focus logic, so you exercise that mussel. The more time you spend learning the terminology the less intimidating it will feel when you are building your event sheets.

Yes, especially if you fall more on the artist/design side vs the technical side. Things will make more sense as you keep on working on your vision.

This will make some heads explode but I must say that learning from YouTube is the worst way to learn, I say this after I spent the first 2 years learning game dev by watching those videos. Most of what I learned I had to through away because it was bad practice. Learning from YouTube will focus on the 'how' to do things (that's if you got pro advice), but it is equally important to learn the 'why' because when you need to build something that has never been done before you will need to be able to follow the bread crumbs to the answers.

I do recommend watching some short videos on object oriented programming for beginners and non-programmers because you will learn the terminology and why we use variables and why there are different types. If you can describe the problem you can solve the problem.

I highly recommend that you start reading the Construct manual front to back, its the most simple documentation I have ever seen for a game engine. It has a few gems in it that will help you understand why somethings give you bad performance, you'll also see why some methods that feel natural don't work the way you think they should because computers have no intuition.

Before you know it you'll be learning Unity. I never thought I could do real programming let alone get good at Construct, I quit a number of times but I could never get the urge to make games out of me and now I build 2D with Unity and use Construct to test ideas.

Every Tick events should not be a problem. If your game feels bloated using groups and deactivating groups to avoid processing unnecessary events is the best way to optimize your game.

Are you saying you tested your project on the Android device using the web browser and it works fine, but when you export to apk it does not work as well?

You may also want to try out Synfig, as someone who dosent like to draw I find vector art and vector animation to be the easiest.

I personally use Moho (Anime Studio) for characters and Blender for objects. Because I spent so much time learning vector art I transitioned to 3D fairly easy.

I highly recommend trying out Moho's trial because Moho is very easy to learn, therefore it is the fastest way to get a taste of vector animation.

If you plan on drawing and using cut-outs for bones Dragon Bones is a good option at the moment because it has defamation, something spriter does not yet have, and it is free.

I would like to also mention that bone animation can work well for characters but for 2D its really limited, so if you are someone used to using Krita (or drawing software in general) you may find Krita to be your best option, if not try vector animation.

Whatever you choose just know animation is a real skill and it will take time to get efficient enough to knock out animations quickly, try not to be anxious or you will go insane, it broke me many of times, now its one of my favorite things to do.

Hope there is a way to boost apk performance.

More than likely it is your use of effects, it may be hard for you to want to reduce them for the android version but I would if I were you, the wave/ripple effects cause the biggest hit to performance.

The game looks great by the way.

Yes it is. It will take some work but certainly can be done.