Best Game Development Software

Game Development Software is one of the most crucial elements for Game Developers. It’s also known as a Game Engine. A Game Engine is a tool that eliminates a lot of the technical aspects of making a game. The Game Engine allows you to just focus on building your game.

Although not all games require game engines, and some developers even create their own, it is a very popular choice as it provides all the basics plus a lot of time-saving tools to build your game. If you’re a new developer or an experienced developer our Top 5 Game Development Software list will help you pick the perfect Game Engine for your game!

1. Unity3d: This is hands down one of the greatest game engines. It has a whole suite of assets, strong support, a good community, and it’s free! It has a lot of WYSIWYG tools, and it’s very easy to add and change things.
   Unity3d has powerful and object oriented programming languages including JavaScript, C#, and Boo. You can use any combination of these programming languages in your project. We’re even planning on having a scripting tutorial with Unity3d soon, in which we will teach you how to create an entire game from scratch.
   Another unique and awesome feature is that it allows you to play your game immediately in the editor.
   As seen with the picture above you can play, pause, and fast-forward the game in the editor at any time!
   Unity3d also has extremely easy publishing. All that you have to do is click “Build” and it builds the complete game package for you, and it’s ready for other people to download and play immediately. In the free version the game engine has support for Windows, Mac, and Web applications. There are upgrades you can get to produce your game for iOS and even consoles.
   
   
   
   
   
   The game engine also has a whole slew of custom tools and assets written by users. They have their own asset store where you can buy and sell scripts, art, tools, or really anything that will be useful in Unity3d.
   It is a great tool and is easy to learn. You can create games quickly and efficiently, and it’s especially useful for quickly building prototypes of games to test ideas. I would recommend every game developer to have this software in their arsenal.
   
   
2. UDK: The Unreal Development Kit is a very strong and professional game engine. It is a full-fledged tool that allows you to create games. It has some of the most state of the art rendering and animation integration. It includes a tool called Unreal Kismet, which is a visual programming editor that requires no programming knowledge to use.
   
   
   
   
   
   Some other cool features that UDK has out of the box is built in networking, artificial intelligence, and destructible environments. The UDK is a very high-end tool and is free. It does have a harder learning curve than say Unity3d and may be a more difficult engine overall, but it does have a lot of great features and assets.
   
   
3. Cry Engine 3: Cry Engine 3 is made by Crytek and was used to create Crysis 2. Although not currently available they have announced that they are going to be offering the tool for free in late summer or early fall.
   The Game Engine has a full suite of tools that are used to create your game. It has one of the best looking graphics rendering of any game engine. Also included is an AI system and custom character support built right in the engine. It supports Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Windows Platforms.
   
   
   
   
   
   Since this is currently not available it’s hard to tell if this will be a great and easy to use engine or not. It has a lot of great qualities and has been used to create a stunning game.
   
   
4. LÖVE Game Engine: Yes that is the actual name of the game engine. TheLÖVE Game Engine is a 2D game engine, although there have been some users that have modified it so it could do 3D rendering. It is completely open source and free.
   The game engine is very simple to use and there are a lot of built in functions that will help you easily create your game. It runs on and creates games for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu. The game engine is not an IDE, which means that it doesn’t have a visual editor. Your whole game is created directly from the main program (I would suggest using Notepad++for programming). Its programming language is Lua, which is probably the easiest programming language to learn and use. As it is simple and lenient on certain syntax.
   
   
   
   
   
   The LÖVE Game Engine community is active and accepting, so it’s fairly easy to join the game engine’s community (hence the game engines name). The LÖVE Game Engine is an easy and fun to use tool. It is an excellent choice if you’re looking to make 2D games quickly and easily.
   
   
5. Game Maker: Game Maker is an engine built so a person that doesn’t know programming would be able to make games. It has a free and a purchased version. It’s built mostly for 2D game creation, but recent updates allow you to make 3D games with it as well.
   Although it does have a lot of drag and drop tools you will probably need to learn some scripting if you want to make a game that’s anything other than the basics.
   
   
   
   
   
   Game Maker is a neat little tool to mess around with if you’re just starting game development. It’s not really recommended if you want to make anything “professional” or make a name for yourself in game development. As tools that anyone can make a game with are sort of looked down upon in the community. It certainly is a good tool to start game development and to try your hand at making some games with though.