Resources 0

Wan • 6 years ago 

This page compiles a list of free resources for making games, especially for beginners. If you have suggestions to add please let us know!

Graphics software

Name Description
Gimp Popular general purpose software for drawing and manipulating images. Open Source.
Inkscape Popular vector graphics software. Open Source.
Blender Popular 3D modeling & animation software. Open Source.
Paint.NET Intuitive image editing, like Paint but enhanced with layers, transparency, etc. (Windows only).
MagicaVoxel Voxel editor, which is a cool way to make original assets, either in 2D or 3D.
Piskel Editor for animated sprites, has an online version. Ad-supported.
GraphicsGale Old-school looking but powerful sprite editor, supports animations.

Audio software

Name Description
sfxr Excellent and accessible tool for creating sounds effects. Online variants have been made since: bfxr (Flash) and jfxr (JavaScript).
Chiptone Visual, powerful, online sound generator.
Audacity Simple and popular audio recording, mixing & conversion software. Perfect for turning WAVs into lighter formats.
Beepbox The easiest music making tool you could find. Online and Open Source.
Bosca Ceoil Easy music editor, great for beginners. Misses an undo button. Open Source.
TIC-80 While a full-featured fantasy console, you could just use its accessible music tracker. Open Source.
Audiotool Online, knobs-and-cables music editor. Exporting requires a free account.
LMMS Full featured, cross-platform music creation software inspired by FL Studio. Open Source.

Game engines/frameworks

Name Description
Unity Popular and feature-rich engine, both for 3D and 2D games. Requires programming in either JS or C#. Free version has few limitations and plenty to work with.
Godot Engine Powerful engine for 3D and 2D games. Uses a Python-like language. Open Source.
GDevelop 2D game engine letting you write logic without knowledge of coding. Open Source.
Stencyl 2D game engine that uses visual blocks instead of code. Free version lets you publish for the web.
Scratch Very accessible, and even kid-friendly engine for creating visual stories, animations and games.
Löve2D Popular 2D game framework built to be easy to use. Uses the accessible Lua language. Open source.
TIC-80 Fantasy console, similar to the popular but paid Pico-8. Customizable palette. Open Source.
PhaserJS JavaScript framework to make 2D games for the browser. Open source.
Twine Engine for writing interactive stories with no code at all. Open Source.
RPGBoss RPG Maker clone, for creating RPGs without code. Open source.

Free assets

Name Description
Open Game Art The main reference for finding graphics & audio to reuse with permissive licenses.
Free Music Archive A large database of permissive music (mostly Creative Commons), featuring a wide range of styles.
FreeSound A huge database of sound effects.

Miscellaneous

Name Description
TilEd Powerful editor for 2D maps (platformers, RPGs, etc.), which can then be exported in either its own TFX format or simple JSON. Open Source.
Open Broadcaster Software Lets you record your desktop to either videos or streaming platforms.
ScreenToGif Powerful tool for recording short sequences from your screen, editing them and exporting them as gifs (Windows only).

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