A free program to convert images into pixel art
A really great background creator. You create and import a sprite sheet and then use this to draw the tiles.
A really cool well-organized game engine. Seems to strike a good balance between ease of use and flexibility. I haven't mastered it yet but the design philosophy seems very solid.
A really great game engine for making games quickly. The built-in scripting system makes creating behaviors much easier for non-programmers.
I personally don't like a pixelated UI so I used this in Aseprite to make the window draw less attention to itself.
One of the easiest and most fun game-creation tools ever. JUST simple enough that you can be making something in a day or two and complex enough that you can make something pretty nice. The scripting system made perfect sense to me as a non-coder. It actually has the ability to export both playable web games AND legitimate Game Boy roms that can play in emulators and on the original hardware.
I've used a ton of different pixel art programs. This one has a lot of great animation tools. I was initially reluctant to use it but it's pretty great.
