awesome-gamedev
I just made this list to arrange different gamedev resources. I just get tired of looking through different Google Spreadsheets, reddit topics and repositories. So I just decided to create my own awesome list based on differnt sources.
Based on
- My own research and data
- Reddit topic about gamedev tools
- 69 Tools We Use To Make Our Game Satisfactory - Coffee Stain
"Still supported" Explanation
Remeber to check commit date!
| Symbol | Description |
|---|---|
| ✅ | News or/and repo changes in six months |
| ❔ | Hard to tell... |
| ❌ | No news or/and repo changes in six months |
| 〰️ | Not applicable |
Tools
- Animations
- Audio
- Assets
- Graphics
- Engines
- Game Design
- Feedback from Players and QA
- Localization
- Marketing and Bizdev
- Project Managment
- Programming and scripting
- UI/UX
Learning Resources
Tools
Animations
| Name | Descriotion | Still supported? | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| AnimBot | animBot is the coolest and most powerful toolset for Maya animators, used by more than 90% of the greatest full feature and AAA game studios. | ❔ | Commercial |
| Autodesk Maya | Maya: Create expansive worlds, complex characters, and dazzling effects | ✅ | Commercial |
| Cascadeur | 3D animation software for physics-based character animation | ✅ | Free for revenue less than 100 000 USD/year |
| Spine 2D | Spine is an animation tool that focuses specifically on 2D animation for games. | ✅ | Free trial (different commercial licences based on annual revenue) |
Assets
| Name | Type of assets or description form website/repository | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Artvee | Browse and download high-resolution, public domain artworks. | Free |
| Dimensions | Dimensions.com is an ongoing reference database of dimensioned drawings documenting the standard measurements and sizes of the everyday objects and spaces that make up our world. | Freemium |
| Game Icons | Free icons for your games | CC BY 3.0 |
| Mixamo | 3D animations | Check under assets! |
| OpenGameArt | Plenty of different assets! | Check on assets page! Most of them are distributed under CC |
| Polly.pizza | Low poly models sometime with animations | Creative Commons licences |
| R/gameassets | Share free game assets including sprites, audio and 3D models! | Free |
| Textures | Take your art to the next level with our industry leading digital materials and objects. | Freemium |
| UE5 Editor Blueprint CS | Unreal Engine 5 Editor Blueprint Cheat Sheet | Free |
| UE5 Editor C++ CS | Unreal Engine 5 Editor C++ Cheat Sheet | Free |
| UE5 Editor Hotkeys CS | Unreal Engine 5 Editor HotKeys Cheat Sheet | Free |
Audio
| Name | Description (from website or repository) | Stil supported? | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audacity | Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. | ✅ | Free |
| MuGen | A downloadable music generator | ✅ | Commercial (14.99 USD) |
| REAPER | REAPER is a complete digital audio production application for computers, offering a full multitrack audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing and mastering toolset. | ✅ | Commercial with free trial |
| Resonic Player | Resonic Player is a fast audio and music player, directory player, and sample browser, built around a big waveform view, a frequency analyzer, and a musical spectrum. | ✅ | Free for personal and non-profit use |
| Wwise | Wwise, the most advanced, feature-rich interactive audio solution. | ✅ | Free for production budget less than 250K USD |
| Youlean Loudness Meter | Youlean Loudness Meter helps you find the true perceived loudness of your audio and prepares it for TV or streaming services release. | ❌ | Free with pro option |
Graphics
| Name | Description (from website or repository) | Still supported? | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aseprite | Aseprite lets you create 2D animations for videogames. From sprites, to pixel-art, retro style graphics, and whatever you like about the 8-bit and 16-bit era. | ✅ | Commercial (19.99 USD) |
| Asset Forge | Asset Forge allows anyone to create 3D models and 2D sprites using building blocks. Models are compatible with most available game engines. | ❔ | Commercial |
| Blender | Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation | ✅ | Free |
| Houdini | Houdini is built from the ground up to be a procedural system that empowers artists to work freely, create multiple iterations and rapidly share workflows with colleagues. | ✅ | Free with revenue thresholds |
| Image Splitter | A small tool to split images into square tiles, like large Discord emojis. | ❔ | Free |
| ImageMagick | Use ImageMagick® to create, edit, compose, or convert digital images. | ✅ | Free |
| KenShape | Draw in 2D, set the depth for each pixel and generate 3D models! | ❌ | Commercial (3.99 USD) |
| Laigter | Automatic normal map generator for sprites! | ❌ | Free |
| LibreSprite | LIBRESPRITE IS A FREE AND OPEN SOURCE PROGRAM FOR CREATING AND ANIMATING YOUR SPRITES. | ✅ | Free |
| Magic Poser | Easy 3D Characters for Creators | ✅ | Free |
| MagicaVoxel | A free lightweight GPU-based voxel art editor and interactive path tracing renderer. | ❌ | Free |
| Marmoset Toolbag | Unified baking, texturing, and rendering tools make Toolbag the cornerstone of every 3D artist’s workflow. | ✅ | Commercial |
| Milanote | Milanote is an easy-to-use tool to organize your ideas and projects into visual boards. | ✅ | Free (up to 100 notes, images or links) |
| Pribambase | Pribambase is a small tool that connects Aseprite and Blender, to allow painting with instant viewport feedback and all functionality of external editor at the same time. It also adds a few shortcuts like displaying the UV map in Aseprite or setting up a grid-scaled pixelart reference in the viewport. | ✅ | Free |
| Procreate | The complete art studio you can take anywhere | ✅ | Commercial |
| PureRef | All your reference images in one place | ✅ | Commercial |
| ShoeBox | ShoeBox is a free Adobe Air based app for Windows and Mac OSX with game and ui related tools. Each tool uses a drag and drop - or clipbord interaction for a quick workflow | ❔ | Free |
| ZBrush | ZBrush sets the industry standard for digital sculpting and painting. Its features enable you to use customizable brushes to shape, texture and paint virtual clay in a real-time environment that provides instant feedback. | ✅ | Commercial |
| xNormal | xNormal™ is a free app to bake texture maps ( like normal maps and ambient occlusion ). | ✅ | Free |
Engines
| Name | Programming language | Still supported? |
|---|---|---|
| Amalgam Engine | C++ | ✅ |
| Bevy | Rust | ✅ |
| Cocos2d-x | C++, JavaScript, Lua | ✅ |
| Defold | Lua | ✅ |
| Godot | GDScript, C# | ✅ |
| Heaps | Haxe | ✅ |
| PyGame | Python | ✅ |
| Raylib | C++ | ✅ |
| Stride | C# | ✅ |
| Unity (aka Unity3D) | C# | ✅ |
| Unreal Engine | C++, Blueprint | ✅ |
FeedbackAndQA
| Name | Description | Still supported | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decky | Collect feature requests, ideas and bug reports directly from your Discord community. | ✅ | Free |
| Input Overlay | Input Overlay is a small plugin for obs studio that shows keyboard, mouse and gamepad inputs on stream. It adds a new source for visualizing inputs. | ❌ | Free |
| OBS | Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. | ✅ | Free |
| Upvoty | Know what to build next and inform your customers when you ship! | ✅ | Commercial (from 15USD/month) |
GameDesign
| Title | Description | Still supported? | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Articy | The solution for interactive storytelling and game content management. | ✅ | Free trial |
| Desmos | Desmos wants to build a world where every student learns math and loves learning math, where a student’s access to the power and beauty of math doesn't depend on their place of birth, race, ethnicity, gender, or any other aspect of their identity. | ✅ | Free |
| Game design template | Template for initial stage of game development | ✅ | Free |
| Inky | A narrative scripting language for games. | ❌ | Free |
| Loopy | In a world filled with ever-more-complex technological, sociological, ecological, political & economic systems... a tool to make interactive simulations may not be that much help. | ❌ | Free |
| LoreHub | Create interactive stories and worlds for your games. | ✅ | Free limited to 3 users |
| Machinations | Predict Game Economies & Systems | ✅ | Free limited to 1 user and 3 days version history |
| PlantUML | PlantUML is used to draw UML diagrams, using a simple and human readable text description. | ✅ | Free |
| Sankeymatic | Graph visualization | ✅ | Free |
| Tiled | Tiled is a 2D level editor that helps you develop the content of your game. | ✅ | Free |
| Twine | Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories. | ✅ | Free |
| Yarn | Yarn Spinner helps you build branching narrative and dialogue in games. It's easy for writers to use, and has powerful features for integrating your content straight into your game. | ✅ | Free |
Localization
| Name | Description (from website or repository) | Still supported? | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crowdin | Crowdin is a cloud-based solution that streamlines localization management for your team. | ✅ | Free with Pro plans |
| Polyglot | Start localizing your game, using this human translated resource for the basics. | ❌ | 〰️ |
MarketingAndBizDev
| Name | Description (from website or repository) | Still supported? | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| AppMagic | Mobile Market Intelligence Tool | ✅ | Some free features |
| Data.Ai | The 1st Unified Data AI Company to combine consumer and market data with the power of artificial intelligence to fuel insights. | ✅ | Commercial |
| Presskit() | Developers & press both have the same goal: to bring great games to as many people as possible - after all, a good game is worth nothing if no-one plays it. | ❌ | Free |
| Presskit.html | Re-implementation of presskit() as a static site generator | ❌ | Free |
| Ren’Py Visual Novels on Steam: A Step-by-Step Guide | This is a step-by-step guide with screenshots for getting your Ren’Py based game onto Steam. Created by Bob Conway | 〰️ | |
| Restream | Set up high-quality live streams right in your browser and broadcast to multiple channels at once. | ✅ | Free for 2 channles |
| ScreenToGif | ScreenToGif allows you to record a selected area of your screen, edit and save it as a gif or video. | ✅ | Free |
| Sensor Tower | Navigate the digital landscape with Sensor Tower’s next-generation, market-leading digital analytics platform | ✅ | Commercial |
| Steam Assets for Export, Explained | These are graphical assets for Steamworks project. Prepared for export with correct dimensions and names, explained with examples from real world, linked to documentation | 〰️ | Free |
| Steam Market Study | Market Study is a Google Sheets document which allows you to get a rough estimate of sales and revenues of any released title on Steam. | 〰️ | Free |
| Steam Revenue Calculator | This Chrome plugin shows the game's revenue inside the Steam store page.It uses the Boxleiter method to calculate estimated app owners then calculates cuts, refunds etc. | ✅ | Free |
| SteamDB | This third-party website gives you better insight into the Steam platform and everything in its database. | ✅ | Free |
| SteamPeek | Indie friendly game discovery | 〰️ | Free |
| Storemaven | Get more installs with highly converting app store product pages | ✅ | Commercial |
| StreamElements | Different elements for improving engagement during streams. | ✅ | Free |
| Tagsfinder | Hashtag generator and search engine. Don't know which hashtag to use? You can use our hashtag generator which will help you find top 30 hashtags based on keyword selection. | 〰️ | Free |
Programming
| Name | Description (from website or repository) | Still supported? | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2Sync | 2Sync specializes in creating innovative and immersive XR experiences that synchronize real and virtual worlds. | ✅ | Commercial |
| Atom | A hackable text editor for the 21st Century | ❌ | Free |
| Bitbucket | Bitbucket is more than just Git code management. Bitbucket gives teams one place to plan projects, collaborate on code, test, and deploy. | ✅ | Free up to 5 users |
| Depot | DEPOT is a data editor built inside of Visual Studio Code that allows you to edit JSON data like a spreadsheet | ❌ | Free |
| DnSpy | .NET debugger and assembly editor | ❌ | Free |
| Flow Graph | Design-agnostic node system for scripting game’s flow in Unreal Engine | ✅ | Free |
| GitHub | ... | ✅ | Free |
| GitLab | Deliver software faster with better security and collaboration in a single platform. | ✅ | Free |
| Incredibuild | We deliver powerful distributed processing and unique build caching acceleration for C++ code compilation and analysis. | ✅ | Commercial with free trial |
| Jenkins | The leading open source automation server, Jenkins provides hundreds of plugins to support building, deploying and automating any project. | ✅ | Free |
| Json Online Editor | Just JSON online editor! | 〰️ | Free |
| ParrelSync | Test multiplayer without building for Unity3D | ❌ | Free |
| Perforce | Perforce version control — Helix Core tracks and manages changes to all your digital assets — code, video, large binary files, IPs, and more. But that is just the beginning… | ✅ | Commercial |
| Plastic SCM | Plastic SCM is a version control to help teams focus on delivering work, one task at a time. | ✅ | Free |
| Rider | JetBrains Rider is a cross-platform .NET IDE based on the IntelliJ platform and ReSharper. | ✅ | Commersial |
| TeamCity | Powerful continuous integration for DevOps-centric teams | ✅ | Free |
| Visual Studio Code | A standalone source code editor that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. | ✅ | Free |
| Visual Studio | The best comprehensive IDE for .NET and C++ developers on Windows. | ✅ | Free |
ProjectManagment
| Name | Description (from website or repository) | Still supported? | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Codecks | Project & Community Management in one. Made for Game Development. | ✅ | Free up to 5 projects and 3 users (unlimited Pro 5 EUR/month) |
| HacknPlan | We bring game design documentation and project management together in a unique SaaS game production tool that provides a semantic way of organizing, planning and tracking the progress of your game. | ❌ | Free with file size limits |
| Monday.com | The Work OS that lets you shape workflows, your way | ✅ | Free up to 2 users |
| Notion | One workspace. Every team. We’re more than a doc. Or a table. Customize Notion to work the way you do. | ✅ | Free up to 5 guests (unlimited guest in Pro 5 USD / month) |
| Obsidian | Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files. | ✅ | Free for presonal use |
| WrokFlowy | WorkFlowy offers a simpler way to stay organized. If you have a crazy job or an ambitious project, we will be your trusty sidekick. | ✅ | Free (with Pro 4.99 USD/month) |
| untools | Collection of thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems. | ✅ | Free beta of a app, free tools but all worksheet are behind paywall |
UiUx
| Name | Description | Still Supported? | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe XD | Let Adobe XD be your guide in the evolving world of digital. Create realistic prototypes that tell your story and bring the big ideas to life, faster. | ✅ | Free trial (commercial 12.29 EUR/month) |
| Figma | Figma connects everyone in the design process so teams can deliver better products, faster. | ✅ | Free (up to 3 Figma files, unlimited personal files, unlimited collaborators) |
| Game UI Database | The Game UI Database was created as a free resource for UI/UX Designers in the games industry. | ✅ | Free |
| InterfaceInGame | Explore a collection of video games interfaces and find inspiration for your designs. | ❔ | Free |
LearningResources
LevelDesign
| Title | Author | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Level Design. In Pursuit of Better Levels | Alex K. | Text |
Programming
| Title | Author | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Game Programming Patterns | Robert Nystorm | Text |
| Unreal Engine Guide | Michael Royal | Github repo with plenty of resources |