Tools for indie game devs and creators
Good apps and assets for every craft that makes a game, sorted by craft. Free ones are marked.
Music and sound
- Reaper
A full DAW with a cheap license and a generous free trial. Light enough for an old laptop.
- FL Studio
Popular with game composers for fast writing, and every update is free for life.
- Ableton Live
Great for loops, sound design and anything you want to perform or tweak live.
- Bitwig Studio
A modern DAW with deep modulation, loved by sound designers.
- AudacityFree
Free audio editor for cutting, cleaning and exporting voice lines and sound effects.
- FMOD
Game audio middleware for adaptive music and sound. Check their indie license, it often costs nothing for small games.
- Wwise
The other big audio middleware. Lots of studio audio jobs ask for it.
- Splice
Sample library subscription plus rent-to-own plugins.
- Soundly
Sound effects library app with a free tier, made for searching and dropping sounds fast.
Art and animation
- Aseprite
The go-to pixel art and sprite animation tool. One-time price.
- KritaFree
Free, open source painting app for concept art, illustration and textures.
- Clip Studio Paint
Painting and illustration app with strong line art tools, popular for character art and comics.
- BlenderFree
Free, open source 3D for modeling, sculpting, rigging, animation and rendering.
- Spine
2D skeletal animation that runs in most engines.
- PixelOver
Turns 2D or 3D art into animated pixel art.
Engines and code
- GodotFree
Free, open source engine for 2D and 3D. No royalties, ever.
- Unity
The engine a lot of indie jobs ask for, with a huge Asset Store.
- Unreal Engine
High-end 3D engine. Free to start, with a royalty once a game earns past their threshold.
- GameMaker
Easy 2D engine with a free tier for non-commercial use.
- DefoldFree
Free, lightweight engine that shines for mobile and web games.
- PhaserFree
Free HTML5 framework for browser games.
Writing and dialogue
- InkFree
Free scripting language for branching stories, made by inkle.
- Yarn SpinnerFree
Free dialogue tool for Unity and Godot, written like a screenplay.
- TwineFree
Free tool for prototyping branching stories in your browser.
- articy:draft
Story, quest and dialogue planning for bigger narrative games.
Assets and marketing
- KenneyFree
Thousands of free game assets you can use in anything, even commercial games.
- Unity Asset Store
Models, sounds, tools and templates, free and paid.
- Humble Bundle
Watch for game dev software and asset bundles at a big discount.
- GameHubFree
Discord bot that posts free-game alerts, deals and indie game spotlights in your server. To get your own game spotlighted, join the GameHub support server and submit it with the bot command. A partner of ours.
- PlayScout
Paste your Steam page and get a big list of YouTubers and streamers who cover games like yours. Full disclosure, I founded it.
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