Resources

Beginner Friendly

These programs can be learned quickly and are easy to use, but they are limited in what they can do.

• Construct 3
• Game Maker Studio
• RPG Maker (Often goes on sale on Humble Bundle)
• Scratch
• Bitsy

Story Focused

These programs are good for creating narratives and story based games without too much coding.

• TWINE
• Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

Fully-featured game engines

These game engines are versatile enough to make it possible to implement a large variety of game mechanics without having to do any low-level programming.

• Unity 3D
• Unreal Engine
• CryEngine
• Godot Engine

Development Frameworks

These give programmers the most flexibility in implementing features, but do not provide much out of the box. They require a huge amount of programming.

• LÖVE 2D
• Cocos-2d
• Corona
• LibGDX

Multi-purpose

• Adobe Photoshop A discount is available to students
• GIMP
• Paint.NET
• Inkscape

Drawing and Painting

• Krita
• Paint Tool SAI
• Corel Painter
• Clip Studio Paint

Pixel art

• Graphics Gale
• Asesprite
• Pyxel Edit

Textures, Tiles, and Sprites

• Tiled Map Editor
• Free Texture Packer

Modeling and Animation

• Blender
• Maya
• 3DS Max
• Modo

Texturing and Rendering

• Substance Painter
• Substance Designer
• 3D Coat
• Marmoset Toolbag

Sculpting

• ZBrush

When using free assets, please remember to credit the authors.

• OpenGameArt
• Itch.io free game assets
• Kenney's assets

• Lost Garden