Every body loves to play computer games and the craze have increased drastically in the past few years. Game development is now a career choice for many, believe it or not. Game development is now offered as a course in many universities and more and more millennials are signing up for these sources. There are many game designing software too available today. Some are paid, some are free and some open-source even. Below are some of the best game designing software available out there.
In this article...
1. Unreal Game Development Kit
UDK was developed by Epic games and they released the free version of the UDK or Unreal Engine 3 in the year 2009.You can create a game for free but if you want to publish it then it is chargeable. The main features of this tool are Powerful Scripting,State-of-the-Art Animation,Real-time Shaders,Distributed Computing,Particle Effects etc.
2. Game Maker Studio
Game Maker Studio is developed by YoYo Games Ltd and is best suited for entry level persons for designing the games in a professional way.The main features include built in scripting language,multi format support for desktop /mobile/web,Shaders,Box2D physics,Yoyo compiler etc.
3. Construct 2
Construct 2 is a HTML game creation tool and is mainly used for designing 2D games.The game can be run on almost all platforms like Windows,Linux,Android,Mac,Blackberry,iOS etc. There are over 70 visual effects available to make your game look wonderful and you can also add realistic physics effects.
4. Unity3D
Unity3d is developed by Unity Technologies and is mainly used for designing 2D as well as 3D games.The main features include Built-in Physics,Optimized Rendering,Real time Networking,Beautiful terrains,flexible scripting language etc.The game can run on all platforms like Windows,Blackberry etc.
5. CryEngine3
CryEngine3 is a full fledged SDK (Software Development Kit) for developing 2D as well as 3D games.The main features include Real Time Lighting,High Quality 3D Ocean Technology,Advanced Shader Technology,Terrain 2.5D maps,Dynamic Path Finding etc.
6. Blender 3D
Blender is a free and open source development tool for 2D and 3D games.The main features include Character modeling,Rigging,Rendering,Animation,Shading,Physics and particles,Realtime 3D,motion tracking etc.
7. Multimedia Fusion 2
Multimedia Fusion 2 is developed by the company Clickteam and is used for developing games for all the platforms like Windows,iOS,Android,Xbox,Java games in Mobile phones etc.It can be used to create any type of game like puzzle,strategy etc.
8. Flixel
Flixel is an open source library for the development of games and it is free for personal use. It is written using Actionscript 3.The main features include creating game levels using tilemaps,collisions between objects,pathfinding etc.
9. Flashpunk
Flashpunk is an open source library for developing 2D flash games.The main features include tilemaps,collision,backdrops,particle effects,timesteps,panning,crossfading,motion tweening, rendering etc.It uses Actionscript 3 library for the development.
10. Stencyl
Stencyl is basically a cross platform environment for developing games for all platforms like windows, iOS,Andriod,Mac etc.It has all the essential tools like tilemaps,collisions,physics,particle effects etc.
11. XNA Game Studio
XNA Game studio is a development environment used for designing games for the Xbox and windows based devices.Both 2D and 3D games can be developed using this tool.
12. BlitzMax
BlitzMax is the future development environment for designing game in the platforms like Windows,Mac and Linux.It can be used by both the beginners and advanced programmers for designing 2D and 3D games and it includes all the tools like collision,physics,particle effects etc.
13. jMonkeyEngine
jMonkeyEngine is a Java based open GL development environment for developing 2D and 3D games.It is used to make any type of game like puzzle,strategy,adventure etc.
14. Torque
Torque is the open source development environment developed by the company garage games. It is available in two versions 2D and 3D.The main features include rendering,physics,terrain,networking etc.
15. GameStart
GameStart is a cross platform development environment for creating 2D and 3D games and it has the main features like physics,particle effects,rendering,lighting etc.
16. Scratch
Scratch is a simple tool with pre designed templates for creating animated games.It is not a full fledged environment and it has limitations.
17. Sploder
Sploder is a tool with pre designed templates for creating arcade games,puzzle games,3D adventure games etc.
18. Allegro
Allegro is a open source and cross platform programming library for developing 2D games. The environment is based on C and C++ languages.It has the main features like rendering,physics,networking etc.
19. Adventure Game Studio
AGS is mainly used for creating 2D and 3D adventure games.It is used to create the story like games and has got all the tools necessary for that.
20. ZGameEditor
ZGameEditor is a cross platform and open GL tool mainly used for creating arcade style games which can run on all platforms like Linux,Mac,iOS and Andriod.
