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!