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Whether you’re only starting to make your perfect game or gained experience in different projects, we wanted to make a list that summarizes everything you may need for development. In this blog post, we are going to suggest great tools for novices and experts alike – check them out!
For your convenience, we made a basic comparison table that shows you the best game dev tools options for beginners and pros in respective fields of development:
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But for now, let’s take a closer look at all these options and their advantages. You can jump directly to each category through this list:
Game engines are perhaps the most important game creating tools you should pick from the very beginning – these are like software platforms that help you with creating games’ cores. They provide various tools for graphics, physics, sound, crafting gameplay mechanics and many other stuff that game developers inevitably need.
One of the best game creating softwares to use for beginners, GameMaker Studio was used to make Undertale, a big indie hit released in 2015 that slowly became a cult classic. Not only it’s easy to learn, but it’s also easy to use thanks to its simplistic drag-and-drop interface, a great deal of tutorials and enthusiastic community members eager to help you out. If you’re planning to start making a small 2D game to see if you can manage the game-making process – GMS is probably one of the best tools you can use from the very start.
Construct is a great tool for game development for beginners, allowing you to use HTML-based language and very simple UI to develop your passionate projects. It doesn’t require coding, can be integrated into your internet browser and works very well for creating mobile and 2D games as well as prototyping and releasing projects on different platforms thanks to a cross-platform support.
At this point, Unreal Engine is one of those game development tools that have become the industry standard for gorgeous, impressive graphics, cinematic visuals and realistic physics. UE’s Blueprint system also allows developers to create advanced scripting without requiring extensive programming knowledge. Even though it’s commonly used for 3D, high-fidelity and high-budget games, Unreal Engine has the 2D option as well, called Paper2D, allowing you to create visually striking two-dimensional projects as well.
Documentation, platform flexibility and great community – that’s why people choose Unity. This tool for game development takes some knowledge to pick up and start working on the game, but it also tends to be a great choice for game-making in general. A lot of indie games and mobile games are made with Unity and even some big industry leaders use it for their projects. Unity is incredibly versatile, allowing developers to work with 2D and 3D and basically all types of genres and styles.
In very simple terms, scripting is the game’s language used as a game making tool – it’s how you tell the game what to do. The door should be opened, the character should do this and that, and so on. Common languages like C#, Python, or Lua are used to write this logic within game engines and here’s the list of tools that can be recommended to you.
Lua scripting language is pretty simple, fast and light in terms of resources’ usage, readable in comparison to some other scripting languages and popular among developers and modders – which is why it’s so great for beginners. It can also be used with well-known engines like CryEngine, Roblox, Solar2D and so on, making it a versatile tool for those who are willing to become pros eventually.
This scripting language was made for Godot Engine (which we haven’t mentioned in game engines, but it’s a great choice for those who are yet to become a pro, too!) to work perfectly well with all its features. It’s pretty easy to learn, which makes the game-making process more effective and quicker, along with being relatively accessible for those who have just started working on game development. In addition, it is integrated into Godot’s node-based system, which is intuitive and simple, making Godot and GDScript an amazing choice for your first video game.
When it comes to game dev tools, C++ is the a regular choice among professional game developers for big budget projects, which tends to be associated with AAA experiences developed by leading studios in gaming industry. While it can be tricky to learn because of its steep learning curve, it is still one of the most popular scripting tools that is used while working with game development engines like Unreal Engine, CryEngine and so on.
C# is a flexible and powerful scripting tool that provides an object-oriented approach that simplifies game logic structuring, which makes it simpler to manage big projects. With a great selection of pre-built functions and a passionate community, C# offers a versatile environment for game developers to use. Unity, among the most popular engines, uses it as the primary scripting language!
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2D art brings the soul to flat visuals of game’s characters, backgrounds and even interface icons. Even though 3D art tends to be a standard in high-budget titles, 2D art is still beloved by many players and developers. Let’s take a look at some 2D art game creation tools.
Krita is free, open-source and provides a great number of brush packs and tools for concept art sketches, character design, illustration and even texturing. The intuitive interface is easy to understand and active community is eager to help you out if things get a bit too complex in the beginning. This makes it an amazing choice for beginners, especially if you're a 2D game artist – Krita is more focused on digital art rather than photo editing and other things.
Aseprite is a very accessible gaming development tool for designing pixel art and sprites, making it a great 2D art program for developers, and those in particular who want to start their game-making career with an independent project that uses pixelated art style.
Photoshop has long become a standard 2D art game dev app in the industry, being supported and actively developed for more than 30 years. The number of features, functions and effects it provides keep expanding regularly with new updates and sustains all professional needs you may have as an artist in gamedev, which makes it so good for all artistic needs your project will inevitably need.
This vector-based gaming development tool is great for designing user interfaces and producing game assets, along with editing existing art. Affinity Designer has great set of tools and works smoothly, leading to a quick output of assets in game development.
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3D art involves creating models and environments that allow you to feel the depth and volume. It increases immersion and feels closer to real life, since it’s so easy for us to perceive volumetric models. Let’s take a look at some game creating softwares that devs use forthe creation of such models.
3D art in general requires a little bit of knowledge, and Blender is no exception. However, it is a great and popular game creating tool for 3D for those who have only started creating three-dimensional models, Blender allows you to create 3D art not only for games but for animation, educational materials and so on. After you gain more experience and knowledge, you can also use it for virtual reality titles’ production and Unreal Engine integration if you’re going to work with it.
Substance Painter is a great 3D modeling game creation tool that allows you to implement rich-in-detail texture work on 3D assets by using a vast variety of tools. What makes it great is that it also supports physically-based rendering and allows you to see how the textures will appear in-engine after being applied. While it can work for both beginners and pros, it is required to understand the principles of basic modeling before working with Substance Painter.
This tool is basically the standard in the industry when it comes to 3D art game making tools, thanks to a rich collection of tools not only for 3D art but for high-end animation and visual effects as well. The tools provide artists with rigging options for models and it also works very well with mo-cap technology to make the final output even more immersive and life-like
Another game dev tool that is used by 3D art industry professionals, 3ds Max is a great alternative to Maya, less focused on further animations for assets, with ba etter interface that is easier to comprehend and more options to work with polygon modeling. It also provides an option to produce large-scale objects, making it good if you’re planning something huge for your game, like a battle scene or an expansive city full of environmental art and gorgeous architecture.
At this point in history, animation is basically an essential part of modern games and allows to bring characters and creatures to life by making them move — and not just basic walking, jumping or waving but also more complex stuff – the way they behave during the idle, the way the laugh and smirk, the way the fight for life as they are stricken by the deadly found. This is with frame-by-frame drawings (2D) or by manipulating 3D models with a digital skeleton – here are some programs that can be used for both!
We already mentioned Blender for 3D art creation for beginners, and guess what? This game dev tool works for animation as well! It's free and supports basic animation, rendering and other aspects that are useful for animators. Its "all-in-one" aspect makes it a great choice for beginners since you can do both modeling and animation. In addition to this, while its interface may be a bit complex for those who have just started, the amount of great tools for keyframes, rigging and motion makes up for it -- they're useful and accessible, allowing beginners to create things very quickly.
Spine is a perfect games development tool for 2D animation, especially if drawing frame-by-frame animation is a bit too challenging for you just yet. Spine allows to redraw a particular sprite, making it much easier for beginners and faster in terms of the amount of work that is required to put into an animation. Spine's real-time preview and dope sheet (which displays and edits the timing of an animation's keys) make keyframing and timing adjustments very simple easy to understand. And when it comes to pricing, its affordable one-time purchase without any additional subscriptions works really well for indie creators and small teams.
Houdini requires some technical knowledge of physics, maths and node systems, but rewards it with fantastic and flexible output of complex stimulations: it can generate terrain, produce realistic fog and fluid physics and many other things that make the final result incredibly effective, immersive and realistic.
Maya is a great pick for professionals in animating video game objects – there's a great deal of depth and precision in its tools, rigging systems, advanced reformers and muscle systems that lead to a very organic character movement (we wrote a blog post about human anatomy in art, in case you want to know more!). It also supports motion capture integration, making it an essential choice for those who are aiming for a particularly immersive experience. Maya's plugins are also compatible with big pro engines like Unreal Engine and Unity and overall feel like an industry standard for professional game-makers.
Sound design is an incredibly important and underrated aspect of video games – we wrote a whole blog post about it! – a lot of audial aspects like footsteps, music or explosions and the way they sound make the gaming experience more memorable and immersive. Sounds can be recorded, edited, or created digitally using game dev apps for sound design, which you can check out down below.
Audacity is an open-source tool available for free, making it a great choice for starters. It provides you with an option to create and edit audio that will be sufficient for small projects that do not require high-quality sound production. When it comes to simple concepts and projects, Audacity is not only a good choice, but also something that is very easy to pick up and learn quickly, in comparison to other game creating tools.
Another great gaming development tool for beginners, Bfxr is a pretty lightweight SFX tool that works very well with producing soundscapes for indie titles thanks to its focus on retro vibes, which are so popular among indie devs. Or it can be used for prototyping bigger projects’ sounds or creating placeholder until later stages of development. The interface is simple to navigate and results tend to be very customizable, tweaked for all your game development needs.
This is a game dev tool that allows you to create sounds for various kinds of in-game events and immersive experiences sonic-wise. FMOD is the audio engine for your project that allows you not only to choose from the existing library of sounds but also to create your very own soundscapes that match your game’s style, genre and aesthetic. It supports several gaming engines’ integration (from Unity to CryEngine), spacial 3D audio features and plugins for different needs.
Wwise is used for adaptive audio creation, which drastically enhances the gaming experience – the perfect tool if you’re crafting exactly this type of immersive game project. Wwise allows developers to implement interactive and dynamic soundscapes with mixing, additional layering and spatial audio integration. It’s also possible to use this games development tool for integration with Unity and Unreal Engine, making it a convenient choice if you’re working with these engines.
Choosing the right game dev tools depends on your skill level, the game’s style and scope and your budget. There are a lot of aspects that require your attention if you’re directing the game or leading its development. And for some of them, you can use game outsourcing studios’ services. It’s a cost-effective way to collaborate on artwork, animation, sound services, UI/UX and other services, even full-scale game development while focusing on other tasks.
RocketBrush Studio has been working since 2016, providing services of all types for leading industry names, like Supercell, Paradox Interactive, Applovin and many more. You can read our testimonials for more information.
Our portfolio includes different services and styles, aesthetics and genres: from pixelated 2D indie rogue-lites to zombie survival games, from medieval alchemic card games to sci-fi adventures.
We hope this little list of gaming development tools was useful for you. No matter if you have only started making steps or gained experience and aim for bigger goals, we wish you the best of luck with your project since we know how complicated and intricate game development is in all these aspects!
The best thing about games is that they still manage to surprise – let’s hope to see more awe-inspiring games in the future, and let’s hope one of them will be yours.
