Nowadays Indie Games are flooding the markets and it’s no secret that it’s possible to craft your own game from scratch. Everyone can do it as long as they have a computer and an idea in their head. We’re going to show you what kind of tools and skills you need to start creating your own game.
The Game Dev Starter Kit
To be able to make your very first game, you don’t need to have the most expensive device or a high end gaming PC. A simple laptop or even a good tablet is enough to draft your first versions of the game. Now all you need to get started is a handful of programs to help you get started. We’re going to show you the basic programs you’ll need to get started with your game development journey and all of them are free for you to download.
Game Engines
Programming is definitely a very useful skill to have when you want to start creating your own games but most engines nowadays are built in a very user friendly way that doesn’t require you to have any coding experience prior of using the tool. All of those mentioned below support both Mac & Windows and you can make 3D as well as 2D games with them. Keep in mind that you need to be careful when downloading assets for your projects since not all of them can be used for commercial purposes.
Unity Personal from Unity Engine
Unity is one of the most used engines beneath game developers. The makers of the engine even provide free tutorials & Microgames for people to learn their program step by step which lets you create your first game in a matter of hours.
The Unity Asset Store has a huge library of assets, sounds and more to help you build your content which are easy to implement via a drag and drop system. While there are a lot of resources for you to download, most of them aren’t free.
Also you should keep in mind that if you plan on selling your games, once it earns you $100,000 or more per year, you’ll have to upgrade to Unity Pro, which costs $185 per month.
Unreal Engine from Epic Games
Unreal Engine is one of the most popular engines and has a huge documentations about their program. If that’s too much to read for you, you can find a lot of tutorials on Youtube and other platforms as well to help you get the gist of it.
Epic Games also provides it’s developers with a huge asset store. Not only are there a lot of free assets as well but they also provide a monthly rooster of hand picked bundles you can download free of charge instead of buying them.
The Unreal Engine is free until your game earns $1 Million USD in total where you have to pay 5% royalty to Epic Games.
Godot Engine
Godot is a completely free engine that doesn’t require any extra fees or royalties after a certain point. It also provides you with an asset store as well as a documentation to follow along to learn more about the program.
Other Engines
There are many more engines out there like Armory, Solar2D, CryEngine, Defold, Monogame and more but we’re not going to cover them in this article for now.
3D & 2D Digital Content Creation Tools
Aside from the game engine where you build your game you also need to make it look good. No matter if you want to make a 3D or a 2D Game, you need a software to edit them.
Blender for Modeling & Sculpting
Blender is a completely free software for all kind of 3D related like modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking. It even includes a video editing software as well as some essentials of game creation.
Blender is constantly being updated and extended while you can find tons of tutorials for it online. It works on systems like Mac, Linux & Windows. It’s compatible with other softwares like Maya and ZBrush and you can easily import your assets to the game engines. While it can take some time to get used to navigating through a 3D space, it will become second nature the longer you practice.
Blender also provides a huge range of assets in their store for you to use. While Blender itself doesn’t have many tutorials, there are thousands of them on platforms like Youtube and Skillshare.
Krita, GIMP, Inkscape & Co for 2D Content
There are many different free drawing & painting softwares out there but the most popular are Krita, GIMP & Inkspace. With them you can create and adjust various things for your game like sprites, backgrounds and more. There are also softwares like Clip Studio, Photoshop and so on but you have to pay for all of them.
Audio Software for Game Sounds
Of course what would be a game without good sound and background music? While there are tons of pre-made music and effects downloadable on the internet, you probably still need to tweak them. Maybe you even want to come up with your own tracks as well so an audio software is a must.
Here are some of the free audio editing softwares out there you can use to enhance your game experience:
This are all the essentials you’ll need to start making your own game from home. If you have any questions or suggestions for future blogs, make sure to write us in the comments down below or you can write us a mail!
If you’re not quite sure how to start creating your game, you can check out our guide on how to create your first video game from scratch:
Game Dev 101: A Detailed Guide On How To Make A Game 2024
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