Please double check the information and licensing on everything listed as it may have changed from the time that it was added.
Game Engines
| Engine | Description | Royalty Model |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Lumberyard | Fork of the CryEngine which can be used for 2D and 3D games. Supports Lua and C++. | No royalties but you must use AWS for online services. |
| CryEngine | Engine for creating beautiful 2D and 3D games, be it VR or non. Recently integrated C# support. | 5% royalty applies when you ship your project. Your first $5K annual revenue per project is royalty-free. |
| Duality | Modular 2D game engine that provides its own visual editor. It’s highly extensible, written entirely in C# and backed by OpenGL. Source is on GitHub. Actively looking for contributors. Learn more: Getting Started with Duality. | None |
| Godot | Open source engine for creating 2D and 3D games. Supports GDScript, C#, C++ and visual scripting. | Completely free and open-source under the very permissive MIT license. No strings attached, no royalties, nothing. Your game is yours, down to the last line of engine code. |
| MonoGame | Free Open Source implementation of the Microsoft XNA 4 Framework. Supports C#. | None |
| SadConsole | A MonoGame 3.7-based game library using .NET Standard 2.0 that provides an engine to emulate old-school console and command prompt style graphics. Source is on GitHub and has an active community on Discord. Learn more here. | None |
| Unity | Robust engine for creating 2D and 3D games, be it VR or non. Supports C#. Learn more: Basics of Unity. | Free until company makes $100,000/yr then requires seat license subscription for active development. No royalties. |
| Unreal Engine | Engine for creating 2D and 3D games, be it VR or non. Supports C++ and Blueprints (visual scripting). | 5% of gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product per calendar quarter |
Tools
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Behavior Tree Visualizer | A tool built in Unity that draws a graph representation of behavior trees running in the scene. Useful for viewing and debugging. |
3D Modeling, Rigging and Animation
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Blender | A free/open source 3D creation suite. Great for modeling, rigging and animation. |
| Blender Guru YouTube Channel | A series of Blender tutorials. |
2D / Concept Art
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+Paint | A library of videos teaching both digital painting and general drawing concepts. |
Free Assets
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| My Models | Various 3D models. |
| Kenney Game Assets | Over 35,000 free images, audio files and 3D models. |
| AxeyWorks Low Poly Free Pack | A collection of free 3D models. |
| Free Lowpoly Packs | Free low-poly assets created by QuaterniusDev. |
| Reddit List of Free 2D Assets | List of Free 2D Assets maintained on Reddit. |
| Over 2,600 Game Icons | Thousands of free icons in SVG or PNG format. Requests can be made on their GitHub. |
| Radial Progress Bar Shader for Unity | Open source / customizable radial progress bar shader for Unity3D. Allows you to set arc range, minimum and maximum colors, textures, radius, and a few more things. Create HP Bars, Speedometers, rank progress, etc. Available on GitHub |