The Best Game Developer Tools (ULTIMATE List To Start A Game Studio!)

What tools exactly do you need to start an indie game studio, and at that, a thriving one?

Chapters

Intro 00:00
Core Software 00:30
The Ultimate Game Dev Course 01:30
Core Software Continued 02:35
Websites 03:43
Business Tools 06:15
Marketing Tools 08:11
Cheating 12:15
The Ultimate Game Dev Course Reminder 15:15

Recommended Books on Audible

Think and Grow Rich
How To Win Friends and Influence People
Unleash The Power Within
Traffic Secrets
Entreleadership
The Bible In A Year
The Go Giver
How To Write Copy That Sells
Launch by Jeff Walker
The 80/20 Principle
Crushing It!
The Millionaire Next Door
The Power of Habit
Next Generation Leader
12 Rules For Life

[thomasbrush]

POLL (COMMENT BELOW): If you had to pick ONE tool that you spend the MOST of your time using during your game dev journey, what would it be! Comment below. My vote is Audible! 

[RogerTheil]

REALLY love how many advice videos you've been putting out lately. You're the best on YouTube at these videos.

[specterent]

I was considering the Ultimate Game Dev Course and realizing my dreams, then I saw the price tag and realized some dreams are better to let go than have to take a loan against my house to achieve. Joking aside, the price tag is too steep for me and my situation, but I love your advice videos and enjoy all of them.

[greatfruit]

If I had to choose a tool to use 60% of the time then I would choose Aseprite. I already use it almost constantly while developing my game cause it is a very well made and helpful pixel art tool. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to make a pixelated game.

[LordBete]

You can also use Ableton, Cubase, FL Studio, Studio One and many others for music production on windows

[Hueventure]

I am 100% on the creator suite, g Suite tools, etc. I'm building my first game now, but when I was doing just art stuff, I wish I had taken the time to notice and understand these tools built around social media, basic web, and marketing. Because they are free websites and platforms we think about the post fast and get rich fast ways of doing things, but these creator components aren't really new. They've been sitting there for awhile now and mainly to aid in making our post and marketing more business like. Now I post on FB and Insta cross post in creator suite only instead of individually.

Ty, all of this stuff is great advice.

[naturestudioz]

I just wanted to say that this is the best video you have done,
from the effects to the humor.
I also wanted to say that i learned some stuff from this video. Keep up the great work Thomas!

[Glaucus-]

I have binged watched dozens and dozens of your videos thank you for your work

[shinyPIKAx]

Some alternative softwares:

Krita or Gimp for Photoshop.

Davince Resolve for Premier.

Another option for music production is FL Studio, Reaper, or Cakewalk. FL has varying purchase tiers, Reaper is $60, and Cakewalk is free. After trying to figure out what I wanted to use to learn how to make music, and compairing all the other DAWs (Digital Audio Workspace), I ended up choosing FL. It was a little more expensive, I think I got the $200 tier, but you get all updates to the software for free and there are a bunch of tutorials you can find for it. Reaper looked like it would work, but I didn't like it enough to justify not choosing it, and Cakewalk... Works, but it's an older software and in using it for a month I felt like a snail trying to do the most basic things in it, but it does work.

[punnynewsgamereviews]

very useful! Music has always been a bit of an issue for me, which I find particularly important in establishing the immersive atmosphere and feel of the game

[VanessaDegarmo]

If I had the money I would absolutely get the ultimate course! I am just so broke living paycheck to pay check. I hope you guys have another one like this in the future after I find a way to get $1, 000.

[colonelb]

Googling all the time is common for all software development, not just game dev, so anyone getting into programming should set their expectations appropriately. Programming has this reputation of being some precise, engineering, logical discipline and NOTHING could be further from the truth. Programming is like finding an abandoned school bus full of drunk 4 year olds on acid and trying to figure out where they all live so you can take them home. It's a sheer miracle that any software works at all ever.

Source: am a senior programmer and architect w/ 25+ years' experience in C++, C# and web technologies that makes HR software for a fortune 1000 company.

[tastysnak]

If I had to choose a tool that I'm FORCED to use 60% of the time while I work on my game, it would have to be git. Collaboration aside, it has been a lifesaver on multiple occasions. Being able to easily revert a project back to a previous version is a godsend!

[Benji-Lindz]

That 1080 music is going to be stuck in my head the rest of the day. Amazing.

[blackivy]

You’re really spitting out the videos lately! Thanks man. Really love your videos and appreciate you. I’m pretty experienced at this point with Game Dev but I still like seeing how you compile all the steps into these videos lol. I’d love to see more of those podcast videos with other game devs like you were doing before! I’m sure they don’t get you the views, but I’m telling you they’re soooo valuable to people like me who have already been doing game dev for a while and want to learn what kind of strategies other successful game devs are utilizing. Also, I use Unreal engine over Unity and I’d LOVE to see you make a review video on UE to see what you think of it over Unity. Thank you as always Thomas.

[ShadowedStudios]

Just casually doing a line in the background, no biggie. 3:46 :D

[Atharv]

I really appreciate the editing of this video.great work!!

[Amiro]

The thomas in the background is a great addition 😂

Great video!

[dreamisover]

Awesome video idea! The Satisfactory devs had a long video on their channel channel too about which tools they use.
You asked per mail what tool we'd use if we had to spent 60% of our times with it. For me, that's easily Unity.
I mainly use Unity and Visual Studio Community. I haven't dived into animation or art a lot, so most music, textures, models and animations I use are from online assets. I also have audacity and Blender installed for rare cases where I need them, but then they are super handy. For version control I use git with SourceTree as graphical user interface

[SuPeRNinJaRed]

Thomas I didn't know you were a CINCO celery man too!
LOADING... TAYNE