List of useful Game designing tools

Note: This list is specifically for Game Design. For a full list of Game Development Tools, go here

For the sake of everyone’s interest, here is a list of useful tools and applications that help you designing your game:

Project Management & Collaboration:

  • Trello: Team management and project planning
  • Pivotal Tracker: Per Project management, has a task point system and completion velocity tracking. Free for one user
  • Wigio: A free online group collaboration program
  • Base Camp: Project management and file sharing tool
  • Google Hangout - To discuss designs with a distributed team
  • Evernote: is great to easily write your game idea, code idea … everything!
  • Podio
  • RealtimeBoard: Digital whiteboard for collaboration and project management
  • Padlet
  • Slack: Text based chat app that uses a channel system for team mangament and discussion

Diagram / Graph drawing:

  • MS Visio: highly recommended!
  • Lucidchart: Online program to draw graphs (technology trees or diagalogues)
  • yEd Graph Editor: Free cross platform graph editor
  • Dia: A free program to easily draw graphs (technology trees or diagalogues)
    - FreeMind - Free Mind Mapping Software. If you don’t know what mind mapping is I highly recommend you learn!
  • DrawIO: Online free web program to draw diagrams, intergrated with cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive

Writing:

Image Editing:

  • Photoshop: Probably the most wide-spread option in the game industry
  • GIMP: Free alternative to photoshop, with plenty of features!
  • Inkscape - To draw mock-ups of UI’s in real-time using Google Hangout
  • Paint.Net: Intended as a free replacement to the basic Paint program in Windows

3D Modelling:

  • Blender: Free 3D modeling with lots of great features
  • Sketchup: Free 3D modelling tool aimed at architecture. Can be very useful to quickly draw some level designs or layouts!

Screen Capturing:

  • ScreenPresso - For capturing screen shots, design ideas, gameplay, mockups, errors, …
  • Puush: Capture screenshots of active window or a selectable area, automatically copies link
  • CloudShot: Screen capturing addon for dropbox
  • ShareX: Screen capturing software with lots of features
  • Open BroadCaster Software (OBS): An open source screen recorder with a lot of customizability and integration with streaming services like twitch and youtube.

File Sharing:

  • Dropbox: get up to 50GB for free when also installing the app on your smartphone! Also automatically syncs local files between multiple devices (referral link, get 0,5GB extra!)
  • OneDrive: get 15GB for free with your Microsoft account (referral link, get 0,5GB extra!)
  • Google Drive: get 15GB for free with your Google account (but online created documents dont use this free space)

Misc:

  • Articy: Draft: All-in-one game design tool
  • Audacity - Free Audio Editing & Recording Software
  • Moqups: UI/UX wireframing tool, free and web based
  • ProtoIO: Web based prototyping tool for (mobile) UI design

Oh, and don’t forget that the old pen & paper also are extremely useful game design tools!

Other Game Design Resources:
ArtStation is the new cghub, if anyone needs inspiration/ideas

A nice blog for game design:

Youtube channel with many Game Design topics:
Extra Credits

If you have any suggestions, please comment and I’ll add them to the list! :smile:

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We also use:
https://wiggio.com/
Wiggio is a completely free, online toolkit that makes it easy to work in groups.

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Thanks, Ill add it to the list :slight_smile:

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  • Pivotal Tracker: Per Project management, a lot like Trello but has a task point system and more organizational options as well as completion velocity tracking. Free for one user.
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Thanks, added!

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There is http://www.icescrum.org.
IceScrum is your free and open source agile tool: scrum, kanban, xp. It helps your teams to manage your agile developments.

I like this one. You can install and use it if you like.

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added :slight_smile:

Online normal and displacement map generator NormalMap-Online

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http://www.targetprocess.com/ - Web based Scrum/Kanban tool, free up to 5 users.
https://www.celtx.com/ - Free web-based scriptwriting tool.

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And of course not all tools are electronic: pencil and paper is invaluable. And there’s stuff like LEGO, which Hideo Kojima used in the development of Metal Gear Solid.

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Depending on your definition of “tools” it might be a bit of a stretch, but I’d say pen & paper.
I’m serious. Ideas shouldn’t only exist in your head, you should write them down.

I have a small notebook and a pen next to my bed. More than once I already got up in the middle of the night to write stuff down. That way I can reconstruct my thought-processes from months ago today.

Edit:
@superpig , you don’t happen to be a ninja, do you? :eyes:

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Yes he does.

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I can neither confirm nor deny that I may be a ninja :smile:

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I could have swore that was open source. An alternative is also Scrivener http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

OP I think you’re going to want to start categorizing these pretty soon.

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Thanks for the suggestions! Updated the list

Haha yeah that is what I thought. Suggestions coming in quicker than I can keep up with :slight_smile:

Great thread! Thank you.

base camp is also a great standard. http://basecamp.com

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www.Artstation.com is the new cghub, if anyone needs inspiration/ideas.

www.evernote.com is great to easily write your game idea, code idea … everything!

Other - FREE - useful tools:

  • Google Hangout - To discuss designs with a distributed team
  • Inkscape - To draw mock-ups of UI’s in real-time using Google Hangout
  • ScreenPresso - For capturing screen shots, design ideas, gameplay, mockups, errors, …

and the #1, #2, and #3 game design tools? … pencil, paper, and a whiteboard.

Gigi

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