Thought it might be fun to have a thread where everyone could share their favorite tools for making games.

I'm gonna use this post to list all of the tools everyone's posted and try and organize them!

Engines

• luxe
• Game Maker
• RPG Maker
• Construct 2
• BDX
• OpenFL
• Flash/Adobe Animate
• Unity
• Flixel
• HaxeFlixel
• Unreal Engine 4
• HaxePunk
• Ren'Py
• LÖVE
• Phaser
• Three.js
• Superpowers
• Stencyl
• Corona
• PICO-8
• Blitz 3D
• MonoGame
• PyGame
• ClickTeam Fusion
• AppGameKit
• GameGuru
• SDL

Graphics

• Blender
• Aseprite
• Flash/Adobe Animate
• Plastic Animation Paper
• Pyxel Edit
• Photoshop
• MagicaVoxel
• Mixamo
• Paint.NET
• GIMP
• Inkscape
• Graphics Gale
• Hexels
• Medibang
• FireAlpaca
• Piskel
• MilkShape3D
• DesignDoll
• Krita
• Wings3D

IDE/Programming

• FlashDevelop
• LibGDX
• Intellij IDEA
• Sublime Text
• Atom
• Visual Studio
• Eclipse
• Visual Studio Code

Audio/SFX

• Reaper
• LabChirp
• BFXR
• Audacity
• Renoise
• LMMS
• Sunvox
• FL Studio
• LSDJ
• Aria Maestosa
• MixCraft
Cakewalk

Tools

• Autostitch
• LICEcap
• Tiled
• OBS
• Fuse
• gLapse
• Chronolapse
• ffmpeg
• presskit()
• HitFilm
• DesignDoll

Version Control

• Github
• BitBucket
• Sourcetree

Mobile (thanks thatguynm!)

• Pixly (Android)
• Sprite Something (iOS)
• Caustic (iOS, Android) [edit: reported as compromised]
• Figure (iOS)
• Rhythm (iOS)
• Tabletop (iOS)
• Codea (iOS)

I've always used Game Maker so I kind of have to put that, but I've also dabbled in RPG Maker and had a lot of fun with it.

I've been using Scirra Construct 2 extensively for the past 2 years (Steam clocks me at over 1,000 hours) and I love it. I've made all my games using that alone, though I've recently been doing some Unity tutorials so I can push into doing 3D stuff as well.

Eric Neuhaus (@donkeyspaceman)
donkeyspaceman.itch.io

I use GameMaker Studio and Photoshop mainly, but when doing more detailed 2D animation I use Plastic Animation Paper, which is great for pencil- or ink-style animation (bonus: it's free).

I also have this neat tool called Autostitch, for making panoramas out of photos. Not something I use for games often right now, but pretty handy if you ever need to do a skybox.

Im a total unity fanboy. Does everything I want, runs on everything and is fun to work with - I'll leave it at that.

Unreal Engine 4

Blender

Mixamo

Fuse

Source Tree

If we've got Visual Studio up, might as well throw in a vote for eclipse - https://eclipse.org/downloads/

As I do most of my work by hand, and my day job features it, it's what I use. Platform has drastically improved since they pushed the Luna re-release, now comes with an inbuilt dark theme that doesn't suck (mandatory for constant programming I find, especially at night) and Java as a whole is really pushing usability improvements since 8 was released.

(automatic generic classpath var, no more multiple conflicting Java versions, eclipse has an auto-installer / updater, all sorts of nice stuff. As someone who's used eclipse since Ganymede and Java since 1.5, these are actual real improvements I value)

Note: is an IDE for programming, is not a game engine. Use at your peril, Your Mileage Will Vary :P

There's been way more variety in here than I initially expected! To be honest I totally expected everyone to toss out Unity/Game Maker as their game engine, it's super cool to see the diversity in tools here :)

If you're like me and end up with free time on a train or somewhere away from the computer that could be better spent working on your project, then you may find these programs useful:

Pixly (Android) Free (donate to remove ads)

Pixly is an amazing little powerhouse app for creating sprites, tiles, backgrounds, or anything pixel art on android. It supports layers, animation, custom palettes and has a set of great tools. The developer is a cool guy who is usually quick to respond to any concerns or suggestions. You can also export scaled images and gifs as well. I've been using this for a while and so far it's been one of the best pixel art programs I've used and the best on android.

A cool thing about Pixly is that even though it saves layered and animated files in a proprietary format, if you go into the gallery on your phone these files will be available as PNGs. These PNGs will have their layers and frames separated. This works well for starting a piece on mobile, the bringing it onto the computer to finish.

It does have some quirks. It won't copy/paste anything that is the same color as the background color (easily fixed by changing the background color before copying). Undo can be funny when selections come into play, but there is a histor toolbar that lets you step through any changes made. It also has some other quirks, but overall it's a fantastic program.

Sprite Something (iOS) $4.99

Pixly isn't on iOS, but those with Apple devices do have Sprite Something. This app has many of the same features as Pixly and a great interface as well. I haven't used this one in a while so there might be better alternatives out there. It has a bit of a learning curve for some features, but it is great for making anything pixel-related. Works great on an iPad as well!

Out of the pixel art/sprite apps I've seen and used on iOS, this is one of the best.

Caustic (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android) $9.99 (Android, iOS) Free (Windows, Mac)

Caustic is a nifty audio program/app that has a bunch of features for a good price. It combines a sequencer, mixers, drum pad, vocoder, and various synths that allow you to create music, sound effects, etc. It can sound pretty artificial at times, but then again I'm a crappy musician with no training, so your results may vary.

I like it because you can customize a lot of the instruments, create presets, and the file formats are the same across devices. This lets me start something on my phone, save it to a dropbox, then tweak it on iPad.

There are some better audio apps on iOS like Figure, Rhythm, and Tabletop...but This one works well for what I need.

• I use Ren'Py, it's a python based visual novel engine. Easy to understand, ports to a good number of platforms and is free for commercial use.
• I just came across Bfxr, a cool sound effect making tool.
• I also love Hexels as a graphic program, it's a pixel art program that lets you draw in different shaped hexels.
• Medibang and FireAlpaca are both great paint tools for those who want to draw, they're free, available on plenty of platforms and offer cloud saving.
• Someone needed to mention presskit()

All of my games have been made in LÖVE. It's a desktop Lua based game engine (with support for Android and iOS coming out next release IIRC). All of my games are written in MoonScript (which is what itch.io is made in), which compiles down to Lua. There's nothing game specific about the language but it makes the syntax for Lua much nicer.

If I need to do any pixel art I'll use Aseprite

All the music I write is done in Renoise, it's a modern adaption of a music tracker. Music is written in a matrix instead of a piano roll or as sheet music.

I'm pretty bad at sound effects so I'll typically generate some stuff with bfxr.

For writing code I use Vim.

If I'm recording a timelapse I'll use gLapse.

And for hosting games... well naturally I'll use itch.io :)

Ay ay ay, if you're going to post tools, don't forget Sunvox! The most powerful, cross-platform, free (on almost all platforms), and easy-to-use tracker DAW there is, in my opinion! I've made quite a few tutorial videos over the years using the program, and have made quite a few songs with it as well. Every song on my SoundCloud there was made in Sunvox, and you can hear the quality falling the further back you go in time, haha. That means I and Sunvox are just getting better. :>