What’s really great about Stencyl, is that they’ve done a great job of taking the process and fitting as much of it as possible into menus and buttons that make the interface super easy to navigate. It supports exporting to other platforms, but it’s definitely designed with mobile in mind. Stencyl is a nifty little program that’s geared mostly towards mobile gaming and offers a lot of functionality for those that just want to quickly get started making games for mobile devices. Now we can move into the programs designed with more versatile game design in mind. Platform: iPhone, Android, Flash, Windows, Mac, and Linux Price: Tiered Subscription Model – $0 – $200/year
Ghost Song – Created in Stencyl 7) Stencyl Above is an image of Ben There, Dan That, a great little indie adventure game that you can buy right now on Steam.
There haven’t been a lot of blockbusters made with the program, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been any successes either. It’s a smart evolution as well since most games in the Adventure genre could be summarized as Text-based adventure games with graphical presentations.Īdventure Game Studio is designed to be not only simple to use, but totally free. Off the heels of efforts from TellTale Studios, it’s opened the door drastically for indie developers to tap back into the pulse of the Myst faithful. There are a good number of tutorials out there and a decently sized community, so learning the program could be worth your time.īen There Dan That – Created in Adventure Game Studio 8) Adventure Game Studioįunny enough, other than retro-style games, adventure games are one of the other big genres that have seen a big comeback in recent years. Experience in any type of C programming language and prior object-based programming knowledge will go a long way but isn’t absolutely necessary. Within a few weeks you could have a working game up and running and within a few more weeks, you could have something truly great. In regards to the program itself, it’s actually quite easy-to-use and learn. In fact, the image shown above is of a game called Canabalt, a very popular endless runner that was made in just about 5 days with the program. For example, iOS devices don’t support Flash at all and it can be a pain to get everything working on some platforms. Since Flixel is designed for making 2D Flash games, its use isn’t quite as flexible. Out of all the entries on this list, Flixel is one of the most flexible, but the nature of the program is relatively dated. Quest is a great place to start, and it can even be used entirely in your browser. If you’d like to create a story for others to get involved with and want to keep things as basic as possible.
The interface is free of clutter and it’s designed in a way that makes sense from a game-creation point of view. Since you don’t have to worry about graphics and lots of programming, you can focus in on creating a believable narrative with in-depth dialogue trees and choices.Īs a result, Quest is a surprisingly intuitive and simple text-game creator to use. In fact, making a text-based game is an advisable first game project undertake. In the early days, before graphical games, you would have text-based adventures that unfolded similarly to a choose-your-own-adventure story. It’s easy to forget that, before we had fancy HD graphics and several gigs of storage space for games, words on a screen sufficed. I am by no means a successful game developer, so feel free to give shout-outs to your preferred choices down in the comments. As the list goes on, the programs chosen are a nice balance of user-friendliness, power, and flexibility.
Keep in mind though, this list is not necessarily organized in order of the easiest programs to use, or the most powerful programs to use, but rather which ones are the overall best for beginners. Whether you’re moonlighting as a developer after you get home from working your day job or going all-in on a long-shot Kickstarter to make your dream game a reality, this list is constructed to give you the resources that you need to get started. That isn’t to say that it’s easy to become a successful game developer, or that it’s easy to make a good game that people would want to play, just that it’s easy to get started. If you want to make an actual run at game development as a serious career, you should probably pursue more traditional means, but recent success stories do prove that it’s entirely possible to do without. With all of the tools on the market in today’s gaming industry, it’s easier than ever to get into game development without any formal education.