Game Jam Resources

Recommended Engines

• Unreal Engine
• Unity

Other Engines

• GameMaker
• GameSprout
• GameSalad
• Construct 2/Construct 3
• List of HTML5 Game Engines
• Godot
• Defold
• Pygame
• Processing

Imaging Tools

• Paint.Net
• Gimp
• Blender
• 2D Tile Map Editor
• Aseprite
• Color Scheme Designer

Audio Tools

• Bfxr (retro-style sound effects)
• FreeSound (many sound effects carry specific license restrictions. Sometimes they’re for non-commercial use only or you have to make sure to credit the original authors in your game. Make sure you note the license)
• SoundBible
• LMMS
• Abundant Music (Procedural Music)
• Incompetech
• FreeSFX
• FreeSoundtrack channel
• Audactiy

Sprites/Assets

• OpenGameArt (3D & 2D)
• Glitch (2D)
• Lost Garden (2D)
• List of 2D Assets
• TurboSquid (3D)
• BlendSwap (3D)
• Sketchfab (3D)
• Archiv3D (3D)
• CGTetxtures (Textures)
• OpenFootage (Textures)
• The Open Bundle
• Unity Asset Store
• itch.io (All kinds of assets, free and paid)
• Various sprite archives (such as Here or Here or Here) are also a good place to find a variety of pixel art and sprite sheets to use if you lack artistic skill. Be mindful however: many such sites feature art assets from commercial games and so are subject to appropriate copyright laws. As an example, you are typically free to use sprites of Mario or Sonic for educational purposes like the Game Jam, but you cannot use those assets in commercial games!

Source Control Services

• GitHub (Git repository hosting with bespoke software)
• GitLab (Git repository hosting, free for private projects)
• Bitbucket (Git repository hosting, free for private projects)

Git GUI Clients

• Sourcetree (nice visual GUI software for Git and Mercurial)
• Tortoise Git

IDEs

• Eclipse (General purpose IDE)
• Visual Studio Express (General purpose IDE for Windows Only)
• Visual Studio Code (General purpose IDE)
• Monodevelop (for C# Development)
• Notepad++ (Advanced text editor for Windows Only)

Management Tools

• CollabEdit text editor / chat hybrid
• Assembla
• GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket come with management tools as well.

Readings on Game Design and Development

• The Art of Computer Game Design
• Making Games with Python and Pygame
• A Theory of Fun
• Programming Guide For Video-Gamers
• freeCodeCamp – Game Development

For more resources, check out the PixelProspector Guide.