The best free game making tools

gamedeveloper.com:

Getting into game development doesn't need to be expensive. There are a number of robust tools available for free that allow a hobbyist, student, or person of any experience to dive in and begin creating. From small and specialized game engines like Bitsy and Ren'py to the free versions of bigger tools like Unity and Unreal, here are a few of the best tools with the lowest barrier to entry.

One of the first questions you'll want to ask yourself when you're considering your toolset or game engine is what type of project you'd like to work on. I always tell my game design students to scope very small (that is, to plan a project that is as small as possible in order to have the best chance of actually going ahead and finishing it!) Creator John Thyer has a fantastic blog post here on how to make good small games.

That just refers to scope though: most genres can be scoped quite small. So think about whether you'd like to make a first person shooter, dating sim, block puzzler, racing game, or any other genre you want to work in, and choose your tool from there. Some tools on this list (for example, Ren'Py and PuzzleScript) are fairly specialized for particular genres (visual novels and 2D puzzle games, in particular), while other tools like Godot, Unity, and Unreal are a bit broader.

We'll introduce a number of the best tools here, and list a robust system of considerations further down in the piece, so you can make the best possible choice for your needs.

What is a game engine? It's a collection of software that enables the user (or team of users) to put together assets (like art, animation, sound design and musical elements) with code that gives the instructions for how everything will interact in the game environment. A very