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. :>

Game Maker:Studio is easily my favorite, but i've always been a GM person ever since the 4.3 days -- maybe the fact that i spent so much time with the tool is why i'm so comfortable with it? i will say that GM definitely has its frustrating parts, but i feel like just about every engine does, yeah? i could never get into Construct or Stencyl, and Unity is too overwhelming for my brain to handle. GM:Studio seems to be just right for me, giving me a solid set of tools while also giving me the ability to add onto it fairly easily and without learning *too* much code. (it's also a fantastic tool for prototyping!)

for pixel art, i use GraphicsGale, which is kinda like a "Photoshop Lite, for pixel art and animations" if i had to summarize it. it's about $20 or $30 from HumanBalance, but it's a great program -- albeit a little buggy in places.

We use the Corona SDK. I've used it personally since 2010 and then when I formed Glitch in 2012 it made sense to continue using it. It's strictly 2D ( well there's some perspective stuff you can mess with to get 2.5d sorta ) and uses Lua. It's lovely to work in ( both for prototypes and full games ) and has a fantastic community. - https://coronalabs.com/

I've been using Blitz 3D since I started. It's actually pretty good, but it's no longer supported and it's showing its age. I definitely want to use something new for my next project, something with similar features (3D graphics / code is all text rather than an editor / light on RAM) so I'm checking this thread to look for recommendations. (If you've got a good one, just reply to me directly)

(I've tried unity but found it too fiddly. Same goes for Unreal, and I'm trying to get to grips with monogame but I'm having lots of compatibility issues with models.)

As for everything else, I use milkshape for modelling (this is also really old, and I wouldn't recommend it per se, but it is surprisingly easy/fast to use for simple low poly models, so that's something), audacity and a korg M1 for music/sound.

For the most part I've just been coding my games in Javascript and Python (the latter using PyGame), but I also tried my hand at Ren'Py, and loved it. On the rare occasions that I used pixel art, The GIMP turned out to be surprisingly well-suited, if overkill. It was also useful for altering some 3rd-party art that didn't quite fit my needs, thanks to all those filters. But I've been trying out all kinds of other tools, for various purposes. It's always a good idea to be curious.

My pixel art workflow is kind of weird. I make backgrounds/tiles/decoration art with GIMP, but items/characters/animations with aseprite. I make low-poly 3D models with wings3D, I won't/can't really do hi-poly.

I like the freedom coding in PyGame with no engine gives you, but nowadays I also make games in HaxeFlixel. I can add python libraries like MoviePy and create small video clips and tweet them right from inside the game. Distributing a game with PyGame and native dependencies is a pain though.

I have discovered the Yarn dialog editor. That is pretty good.

I came across this 3D posing program called DesignDoll yesterday that's designed to make to make poses for drawing. It's not a free program ($80 for the license) but you can fiddle around with it in trial mode. Trial mode lacks the ability to export the models to OBJ, loading (you can save in trial mode though) saved files, and the use of the program's community submissions. It's a pretty cool program for those dealing with detailed 2D figures as it is pretty limited as a 3D program, but it gives more than enough for details needed for proportions.

A lot of these people have recommended amazing tools, and I don't have much to add when it comes to game design. However, I will add Aria Maetosa as a good open source MIDI creation software. I have had so much fun remixing and recreating past songs since I have no idea how to write my own stuff, but I hope for all my games to at least use this software for music.

I was surprised to not see Clickteam Fusion here. Hundreds of games have been made in Fusion including big ones like Knytt Underground. It has been around in its various incarnations for almost two decades and is still going strong. It's the engine that Construct directly ripped off (apparently Scirra have even forced their way into Clickteam conventions before trying to market Construct).

Fusion is very accessible to beginners, however as a game industry veteran knowing dozens of languages and engines, I still use Fusion all the time! Almost all the games on my website were made in it. It's deceptively powerful as its mouse-based scripting language lets you lay down the logic for a game much, much faster than in traditional languages. I know Unity inside and out but I can probably make a 2D game around 3-4 times faster in Fusion (no joke).

I have been using the App Game Kit (AGK) since 2013. It's a great little development environment that is cross platform (Windows, Linux, it's, Blackberry and Android with RaspberryPi in the works). I've managed to win an Ultrabook, an All-In-One and a tablet using this engine. I thoroughly recommend it. You can get it via www.appgamekit.com

I've also used Game Guru which is a great FPS engine that enables rapid level creation. This is also from The Game Creators via www.thegamecreators.com

For screen recording I've always used the free version of Screencast-O-Matic. It has some nice features, allows 15 mins of recording, you can hide the mouse pointer and export to AVi, MP4 or GIF.

I don't believe this one has been mentioned but I am suddenly very impressed with open source 2D digital painting software Krita, especially given that the next, currently pre-alpha, version can even do animation:

//player.vimeo.com/video/160449173

Will definitely be using that if I need to do any detailed colour 2D animation in the future.

For game audio, Acoustica's MixCraft is pretty nice. 

Why are these not clickable?

• Flash/Adobe Animate
• Photoshop

This one might not be a good game maker, but people used it to make, types of games..... I guess. But, Alice 3?

Hi,

Here is my list of tools for HTM5 games:

• Ubuntu
• Vscodium (vscode without trackers)
• Phaser 3 (game engine)
• Gimp
• Tiled
• sfxr (sound fx)
• Reaper (sequencer)
• Github
• Qjoypad (map gamepads buttons to keyboard keys)

I like Clickteam Fusion as i can make my games pretty fast, though i am starting to through some programming into the mix for things the engine cannot handle on its own :)

I am leaving it here...some may find it useful 

TextureWorks: Artificial Intelligence Based texture Synthesizer, image high resolution convertor & texture Map generator with over 1600 free textures. 

Wishlist it on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1140360/TextureWorks/

I like using Construct 2 for my modern stuff and for retro hardware I use Arcade Game Designer. Making graphics and designing levels for either I use Gimp and Tiled.

I always go the complex way. My current engine is NALA of which the current version uses MonoGame, but I'm not sure it will stay that way forever. As for the scripting language I use NIL, which much like MoonScript compiles down to Lua, however NIL has a completely different approach, and is made to be much stricter than Lua, and most of all meant for projects that can easily surpass over thousands lines of source code, without getting odd bugs just because you misspelled a variable name (which has always been an issue in Lua when creating larger projects), NIL has also a few quicker (and cleaner) ways to set up meta-tables. 

I coded NALA myself, and NALA in turn uses my Bubble FrameWork, and Kthura Map Editor, the JCR6 file system and some other features most of all with RPG games in min (except from MonoGame, all those things were also coded by me myself and I... I guess I just like to be self-reliant).

I used OGRE as the renderer in my game and Bullet Physics for collisions and other physics tasks. I added Lua as my scripting engine and built the rest of the engine to glue them all together. Given how sophisticated popular game engines like Unity or Unreal have become, the idea of building a custom engine seems almost like an unproductive thought, but an issue in my case was that I needed to expose a scripting debugger to my players and none of the known engines can do that. Turns out it was a lot of fun just to work on it. So I would definitely say.. go custom if you value the journey more than the destination.

My favorite Game Making Tool probably is Blender. It allows you to model anything you could need for a game, and (in versions previous to 2.8) has a game engine that allows you to run quick physics tests, etc. I'm currently working on a game using the BGE (Blender Game Engine) but have been trying to learn Unreal Engine 4.

Please consider adding my 2D multi-platform game engine/framework nCine. You can also find it here on Itch.io.

Since I like to have full control over my program, I use my own engines for my games. I want to support systems & platforms that Unity and Unreal probably never will, and old graphics cards because I don’t need the newer features.

If you´re looking for genre-specific engines, there are also Adventure Game Studio and Visionaire Studio for Point and Click Adventure games. Personally, i was never able to get the hang of AGS. But i´m using Visionaire Studio right now, which works out better for me, so far.

Hi, I'm Joël.

I use unity + the fungus plugin to create my visual novel but being more of a photographer/videographer I also use:

Da Vinci resolve and Premiere pro for my videos and Silkypix and Paint.net for my photos.

By the way, is there an engine in the list that you would recommended for FMV kind of games (with easier ways to integrate videos) ?

I use Construct 2 for 2d games, Unity for 3d. I also use Photoshop.

But I also have a sprawling pipeline of scattered stuff used largely for video editing and VFX and the tools used there easily spill over into gamedev where cutscenes and the like are concerned.

I.e. Vegas Pro, Hitfilm Pro, Lightwave (yes, really, I and many others still use Lightwave) and Blender, etc. Plus a lot of smaller utilities with niche but still significant use cases. I did a fair number of my 3d assets in LW. http://matthornb.itch.io/ Those 3d assets and a lot of other stuff are going on sale right now (April 10-12, 2020)

And in some cases with projects such as Miniature Multiverse, I find myself doing odd things when working with miniature art graphics lately - like simulating fluid water flowing around a rough 3d photogrammetric scan of a level that is otherwise miniature art so that the reflections on the liquid match the rest of the scene plausibly. I will do stuff like digitally extending a miniature set with digital skies, oceans and similar extensions matched in position to each node. The result is a rather unique sort of feeling of wandering around a place that 'feels' sort of weirdly analog. Because much of it actually is built realistically with O scale minis.

http://www.miniaturemultiverse.com/

I would have to say Unity. I use it even for really simple 2D games.

I tried Unreal Engine last year but the node system doesn't come easy to me. Plus,  it kept crashing on my computer.

It’s not on here, but I usually use Clip Studio Paint for art. However I’m not sure if I should switch to Krita for animations. Unity is my preferred engine for games.