In the ever-expanding universe of indie game development, the journey from concept to a fully-realized game is both thrilling and daunting. Independent developers, often working with limited resources and tight budgets, face the challenge of bringing their unique visions to life. Fortunately, the digital age has democratized the development process, providing an abundance of resources that cater to every aspect of game creation. From photorealistic PBR (Physically Based Rendering) assets that breathe life into environments with stunning realism, to captivating soundtracks that enhance the immersive experience, the tools at a developer’s disposal are more accessible and versatile than ever.
Creating a game that resonates with players requires not just technical skills, but also a deep understanding of artistry and storytelling. For indie developers, this often means wearing multiple hats—game designer, artist, sound engineer, and marketer. In this vibrant ecosystem, resources like high-quality 2D pixel art assets and comprehensive 3D game asset libraries are invaluable, enabling creators to infuse their games with personality and depth without the need for extensive teams or budgets.
Moreover, the art of sound design and music creation in games cannot be understated. Music and sound effects play pivotal roles in setting the tone of the game, influencing player emotions, and enhancing gameplay dynamics. For indie developers, mastering these elements can elevate a game from good to unforgettable, creating memorable experiences for players.
This article aims to guide indie game developers through the rich landscape of resources available for game creation. Whether you’re crafting a pixel-perfect 2D platformer, designing a complex 3D world, or composing an original soundtrack, we’ll explore the tools and communities that can help bring your vision to life. Join us as we delve into the essential assets and insider tips that can empower your indie game development journey, ensuring that your game not only reaches the finish line but stands out in the crowded marketplace.
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- Art Assets
- CC0 Textures – PBR Textures
- CC0 HDRI Cubemaps, Models and Textures
- Unruly Games PSD Logo Templates – Easy editable logos
- Unruly Games Simple UI – Clean, neutral UI pack
- Kenney Game Assets – Lots of CC0 2D/3D art, UI and audio packs
- Game Icons – CC3 SVG game icons
- Dev Assets by Brackeys – Pay what you inc free want 3D textured assets
- Cultural Heritage 3D Models – CC0 by Thomas Flynn
- Light probe cubemaps
- Kay Lousberg Art Packs
- RGS Dev Art Packs
- SVG Repo – Icons
- Google Material Icons
- Feather Icons
- Craftpix Freebies – Free 2D game assets
- Blockout Textures – Prototyping textures
- Quaternius Models – CC0 low poly 3D models
- Snyty Store – Low poly Art theme packs
- Art Tools
- Blender (Windows, Mac, Linux) – 3D and 2D art package and video editor
- Assert Forge (Windows, Mac, Linux) – Create models from prefab meshes
- Sprytile – Create 3D models from spritesheet tiles (requires Blender)
- Crocotile 3D – Create 3D models from spritesheet tiles
- Blockbench – Collaborative, online blocky modelling and animation tool
- PhotoPea – PSD editor in a browser
- Texture Packer – Pack individual sprites, icons into a single sprite sheet
- Sprite Sheet Packer – Free, online ‘lite’ version of Texture Packer
- Free Texture Packer – Open source, cross platform texture packer
- ShoeBox – A 2D image toolbox, texture packer, splitter, ripper, bitmap fonts
- Pattern Generator – Create repeated pattern textures/images
- Dither Me This – Dither filter for ‘that’ look
- Art Resources
- Audio Assets
- Audio Tools
- Fonts
- UX and UI Design References
- Game Design Tools
- Game Design References
- Programmer References
- Project Management Software
- Codecks.io – Card game based interface for project management
- HacknPlan – Integrates the game design document as part of the project tracking
- Basecamp – Suite of management tools and communication.
- Notion – Wiki like knowledge base
- Miro – Infinite online whiteboard
- JIRA – Industry standard project and issue tracker
- YouTrack – A programmer focused issue tracker with knowledge base
- Trello – Streamlined card based, virtual board
- Business
- dotoolkit() – Templates for Presskit and Contracts
- Games Opportunities – Funding opportunities
- Global Games Industry Guide
- Pitch Deck Sample
- Video Game Pitch Decks
- Wargoove Pretend Pitch Deck
- Game Conference Guide
- Rawfury’s Developer Resources
- Investors List
- Publisher List (mostly mobile)
- Alan’s Gamedev Resources Sheet (Public)
- Narvik Digest – Games business newsletter
- How to Market a Game
- Indie Game Marketing YouTube playlist
- Game Marketing Campaigns
- GameDiscoverCo newsletter
- Vestd – Manage share and equity
- Communication Tools
- Screen Capture
- ShareX – Capture screenshots, videos, gifs (Win)
- Lightshot – Easy image screen capture with annotation support (Win/Mac)
- OBS – Screen video capture with multiple input sources (Win/Mac/Linux)
- Kap – Easy video screen capture to MP4 or GIF (Mac)
- GifCam – Simple GIF capture (Win)
- Honey Cam – Full featured GIF capture (Win)
- Ray.so – Create beautiful code
- Web Development Tools
- Image Hosting Services
- Scrap
Art Assets
CC0 Textures – PBR Textures
PBR textures that are under the CC0 license
CC0 HDRI Cubemaps, Models and Textures
https://polyhaven.com/ (use https://matheowis.github.io/HDRI-to-CubeMap/ to convert)
Unruly Games PSD Logo Templates – Easy editable logos
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/psd-logo-templates-103928
Edit with PhotoPea
Unruly Games Simple UI – Clean, neutral UI pack
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/simple-ui-103969
Kenney Game Assets – Lots of CC0 2D/3D art, UI and audio packs
Game Icons – CC3 SVG game icons
Loads of great icons for UI and symbol use. Backgrounds, colours and shapes are all configurable.
Dev Assets by Brackeys – Pay what you inc free want 3D textured assets
Cultural Heritage 3D Models – CC0 by Thomas Flynn
Light probe cubemaps
https://www.pauldebevec.com/Probes/
Kay Lousberg Art Packs
RGS Dev Art Packs
https://rgsdev.itch.io/ – Selection of free and paid assets
SVG Repo – Icons
https://www.svgrepo.com/ – Free for commercial use under some different licences.
Google Material Icons
https://fonts.google.com/icons – Free for use under the Apache Licence 2.0
Feather Icons
https://feathericons.com/ – Open source icons
Craftpix Freebies – Free 2D game assets
https://craftpix.net/freebies/
Blockout Textures – Prototyping textures
https://github.com/astrochili/blockout-textures
Quaternius Models – CC0 low poly 3D models
Snyty Store – Low poly Art theme packs
Art Tools
Blender (Windows, Mac, Linux) – 3D and 2D art package and video editor
De Facto standard for free modelling software (check out their features page).
Assert Forge (Windows, Mac, Linux) – Create models from prefab meshes
Make models out of ‘blocks’/prefabs (think Duplo)
Sprytile – Create 3D models from spritesheet tiles (requires Blender)
https://chemikhazi.itch.io/sprytile
Crocotile 3D – Create 3D models from spritesheet tiles
Blockbench – Collaborative, online blocky modelling and animation tool
Also is downloadable as an offline, local software package.
PhotoPea – PSD editor in a browser
Texture Packer – Pack individual sprites, icons into a single sprite sheet
https://www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker
Sprite Sheet Packer – Free, online ‘lite’ version of Texture Packer
https://www.codeandweb.com/free-sprite-sheet-packer
Free Texture Packer – Open source, cross platform texture packer
ShoeBox – A 2D image toolbox, texture packer, splitter, ripper, bitmap fonts
Pattern Generator – Create repeated pattern textures/images
https://doodad.dev/pattern-generator/
Dither Me This – Dither filter for ‘that’ look
https://doodad.dev/dither-me-this/
Art Resources
Colour palettes based on Indie Games
The Complete Guide to Visual Effects in League of Legends
Recommend YouTube videos for VFX
https://www.youtube.com/@1MaFX/featured
Audio Assets
Kenney Audio Packs – CC0
https://kenney.nl/assets?q=audio
Casual Game SFX Pack – CC0
Gamemaster Pro Sound Collection – 8076 sound effects
Audio Tools
Audacity – Audio editor
Bfxr – Sound generator
Fonts
Stephan Dube Xbox One and PS4 UI Font – Free for commercial use
UX and UI Design References
Game UI Database – Collection of UI elements in games
https://www.gameuidatabase.com/
Huge database of UI elements in many mainstream games for mechanics such as lives, health bars, etc
Interface In Games – Collection of UI elements in games
Huge database of UI elements in many mainstream games for mechanics such as lives, health bars, etc
Collection of resources and books on UX
- We can fix it in UI: https://www.notion.so/WE-CAN-FIX-IT-IN-UI-9f588869324a45e2b2d0595546ce77d1
- Celia Hodent’s resources: https://celiahodent.com/resources/
GameUX MG
https://gameuxmasterguide.com/
Blog posts and Wiki pages on different areas of UX design such as Typogrpahy and Color.
GoodUI
A site with A/B tried and tested design patterns for sites to produce higher conversion rates and growth.
Switch Icon Showdown! – Nintendo Switch games icon history
https://www.switchiconshowdown.com/changes.php
Fiery Mario – Presentation on onboarding users
https://richardlhawkes.github.io/fiery-mario-deck/%E2%80%8B#0
Game Design Tools
Map generators
City Generatorhttps://github.com/ProbableTrain/MapGenerator | Dungeon Scrawlhttps://dungeonscrawl.com/ |
Grid Cartographerhttps://gridcartographer.com/ Hex, grid, even export to OBJ | Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generatorhttps://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/  |
Machinations – Game balancing tool
Flow graph game balancing tool and test. They do several webinars on how to use the tool including this one where they modelled Hades,
Game Design References
GameDocs.org – Game Design documents and pitches
Includes the classic Lucas Arts games, Ninja Theory and Doom.
VR Locomotion Vault
https://locomotionvault.github.io/
Great collection of all the different movement controls in the VR space. GIFs and breakdowns on comfort, ease of use etc.
Game a week exercise
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JNLojNIQNwn80043PUJ7ZyYXOjtAI4XHJibvtpe7El4/edit
From the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
11 game themes and examples of games that use that theme. Useful if you need to get out of a creative rut.
Design Games for Game Designers
A presentation of games for teaching students the fundamentals of Game Design
The Theory and Practice of Cameras in Side-Scrollers
Scroll Back: The Theory and Practice of Cameras in Side-Scrollers
Great article on common camera logic and behaviour with 2D games with some great GIFs to explain
UI and UX review for card games
Nice little twitter thread about UI and UX flow in card games. Highlights:
Make the card recognisable while it’s in your hand. eg name, cost, type, anything that unique identifies it.
Selecting the card makes it obvious what it does, what it targets and the effect.
x. strike deals 9, not 6, against a vulnerable enemy!
xi. these are the places i can put spider cocoon. interactions with adjacent placements would be highlighted.
And the follow up animation when played
Zelda: Breath of the Wild open world design
How Nintendo Solved Zelda’s Open World Problem (Game Maker’s Toolkit)
Nintendo’s path design breaks linearity, taking the player on a journey full of mini discoveries using smaller landmarks
The landmarks are hidden behind hills/mountains which gives elements of surprise without overwhelming the player
Dark Pattern Games
https://www.darkpattern.games/
A reference guide to ‘dark’ mobile game patterns where a dark pattern is: ‘something that is deliberately added to a game to cause an unwanted negative experience for the player with a positive outcome for the game developer.’
Riot Game Design Curriculum
A public course for teachers, workshop instructors etc to teach high school students (and others) the fundamentals of game design.
https://www.riotgames.com/en/urf-academy/curriculum-guide
Programmer References
Helpful git commands for beginners
https://dev.to/s2engineers/helpful-git-commands-for-beginners-40bm
Great cheat sheet for the most common commands.
Game programming patterns
https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/
Common patterns used in games and software development.
Refactoring.Guru
Common patterns used in games and software development, walkthrough refactoring code process.
3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development
Free book on 3D math for games.
Math for Game Devs (2023)
Lecture series on maths used in game development
Procedural Content Generation in Games
Game Networking Resources by ThusSpokeNomad
https://github.com/ThusSpokeNomad/GameNetworkingResources
GameCI – Free Unity CI Cloud Build service
Project Management Software
Codecks.io – Card game based interface for project management
Designed and made by game developers and is presented in a card game like manner. Looks great for small teams but lacks the powerful queries in other management tools.
Free for up to 3 users and 5 projects otherwise 5 EUR per user per month.
HacknPlan – Integrates the game design document as part of the project tracking
More scalable for teams of teams and has infinitely nestable tasks. Create tasks from the game design documentation rather than keeping the two separate. Used by many indie studios as seen in the showcase.
Has a lot of the features that you would expect for large teams and projects, including metrics dashboard, kanban view, gantt charts etc.
Free for personal use going up to 6 EUR per user for teams.
Basecamp – Suite of management tools and communication.
https://basecamp.com/welcome-back
All in one hub with instant messaging, discussion threads, to do lists, files, scheduling etc all in one package. Flat rate for any team size.
Free for 3 projects, 20 Users, 1GB. Otherwise 99 USD per month.
Notion – Wiki like knowledge base
An easy space to create knowledge base pages to be shared with the team. It’s also capable of planning and keeping track of tasks, calendar etc.
Miro – Infinite online whiteboard
Create your own management workflow and product overview with virtual sticky notes, pinned images, videos. Allows multiple users to use and edit it at the same time. Provides templates for common use cases.
Free for 3 boards and unlimited members.
JIRA – Industry standard project and issue tracker
https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
Industry standard for managing projects which means there is a lot of resources and help available if you get stuck. It has a VERY powerful querying language but can be quite clunky to deal with.
Dashboards, reports, etc are all very customisable so a lot can be automated in terms of sharing data and current work in progress.
Free for up to 10 users.
YouTrack – A programmer focused issue tracker with knowledge base
https://www.jetbrains.com/youtrack
An issue tracker that was made by developers for developers. There are a lot of keyboard shortcuts and navigation that you would expect from an IDE.
It also now contains a knowledge base to keep reports, documentation etc.
Free for up to 10 users.
Trello – Streamlined card based, virtual board
A column tracker based virtual board that is very straightforward and flexible to use. Subnautica used it in the past.
Business
dotoolkit() – Templates for Presskit and Contracts
Games Opportunities – Funding opportunities
A monthly curated publication with details of upcoming funding opportunities, award entry dates, conference speaker calls etc.
Global Games Industry Guide
https://trello.com/b/BRHxZpZ9/
Huge resource of links and resources to funding, events, accessibility etc.
Pitch Deck Sample
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1utCfsSnV1MZnU8Q2oFucBz5JnDGelLdQdciFx1pUQr0/edit#slide=id.p1
From Gwen Foster at Superhot Presents
Video Game Pitch Decks
https://www.notion.so/Pitch-Decks-f56e38c13fe6417f8379859e74367e1a
A directory of pitch decks from existing games.
Wargoove Pretend Pitch Deck
Game Conference Guide
List of all the upcoming global game conferences.
Rawfury’s Developer Resources
Includes templates and examples for MNDAs, pitch documents, revenue graph projections, etc
Investors List
Publisher List (mostly mobile)
https://airtable.com/shrnWQArNzTM1JmUv/tblRFLawBJA8QbjPN
Alan’s Gamedev Resources Sheet (Public)
Massive spreadsheet with publishers, localisation companies, porting, etc
Narvik Digest – Games business newsletter
Great newsletter covering the business side of games such as revenue numbers and acquisitions.
How to Market a Game
List of resources, blog posts about marketing games. There’s a little upselling of his book but even then, there’s a lot of useful information here.
Indie Game Marketing YouTube playlist
Huge list of videos from a virtual conference by Indie Game Business regarding marketing and User Acquisition.
Game Marketing Campaigns
https://gamemarketingcampaigns.com/
A database of in depth looks on games marketing campaigns including Fall Guys, Cyberpunk 2077 and Valorant.
GameDiscoverCo newsletter
https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/
A great newsletter that regularly posts how users find games to buy and play.
Vestd – Manage share and equity
“Digital equity management, the ability to issue shares & options instantly, a real time cap table, legal docs, the option scheme designer and shareholder dashboards.”
Communication Tools
Screen.so – Multiplayer screen sharing
The founder created ScreenHero before it was brought by Slack. This is one of the few screen sharing tools that supports multiple cursors from each user allowing a more natural conversation flow. ‘Look over here’ can be accompanied with their own cursor movement.
Downside is that the host needs to be able to support a screen share upload to each user which makes it unwieldy for a big group.
Twist – Easy, accessible forum-like communication
A cross between traditional forum and instant chat, with threads as the focus and allowing for more structured conversation while keeping some of the conveniences of instant chat.
Great for asynchronous teams as keeping track of multiple conversations is a lot easier compared to something like Slack or Discord.
Zulip – Instant chat with strong focus on using threads
This is also designed for distributed, asynchronous teams with more focus on threads (or what they call topics) to keep the context of a conversation together.
Jitsi – Free and open source video conferencing
Free, open source video conferencing software with end to end encryption. They also host a ‘quick start’ meeting option at https://meet.jit.si/. No account needed.
Parsec – 60fps, low latency screen sharing
Parsec was originally designed to allow users to play local multiplayer games without needing to be physically together. It can support a 60fps stream and can be used for more than games. I’ve used it to collaborate with team members where we needed to share the same screen and no other screen sharing software I’ve used supported a high framerate and remote input besides Screen.so.
Discord – ‘Best in class’ instant messaging and voice chat
It’s poor for structured team conversation but is probably one of best services for instant messaging and voice chat.
Screen Capture
ShareX – Capture screenshots, videos, gifs (Win)
Fully featured screen capturing software that is free and open source. Can be a little overwhelming in features but being to take a screenshot and immediately make annotations from a single hotkey is great!
Lightshot – Easy image screen capture with annotation support (Win/Mac)
OBS – Screen video capture with multiple input sources (Win/Mac/Linux)
Fantastic screen recorder if you need to record a tutorial, bug, feature request, etc. It does require the use of something like Handbrake to reduce the video file size though. They’ve also released a live virtual webcam feature so you can ‘stream’ via Google Meets, Zoom etc.
Kap – Easy video screen capture to MP4 or GIF (Mac)
Open source screen capture for Mac that allows for basic editing and resizing after capture. Framerates and output type (GIF/MP4) can be done after the capture. Really wish there was a Window version! The closest I’ve found is ShareX.
GifCam – Simple GIF capture (Win)
http://blog.bahraniapps.com/gifcam/
Editing captures is not straightforward but it’s the best I’ve found to use on Windows so far.
Honey Cam – Full featured GIF capture (Win)
https://www.bandisoft.com/honeycam/
Paid app but offers a ton of features that free GIF capture tools for Windows don’t have. Text, chat bubbles and multiple format exports.
Ray.so – Create beautiful code
Not quite screen capture but allows you to present code snippets in a nice visual way with social media etc.
Web Development Tools
Fill Murray – Quickly create image placeholders of any dimension
URL that can be used for image placeholders
Eg Image that is 200 x 300 http://www.fillmurray.com/200/300
JSONbin.io – Free JSON hosting
Useful for host configs and static game data that can be updated over the air without a new app deploy.
This Person Doesn’t Exist – AI generated faces
https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/
Great for placeholders on site mockups for testimonials.
Amazing QR – Animated QR Codes
https://github.com/x-hw/amazing-qr
Much more interesting QR code generator and also supports animated GIFs!
(Learn more how QR codes work here)
Nullitics
No cookie analytics for 1 EUR a month. Fully compliant with GDPR, ePrivacy, PECR, CCPA, and COPPA and requires no cookie banner.
Image Hosting Services
Catbox – Free 200MB uploads
No ads, simple direct URL to image.
JustPaste.it – Free text and image uploads
No ads
Scrap
Note to self to look at interesting tools etc.
Free people to download
AI character animation:
Low poly assets from BitGem:
Texture Generator
https://cpetry.github.io/TextureGenerator-Online/
Material Maker
https://rodzilla.itch.io/material-maker
NormalMap Generator
https://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/
Wick Editor – The next Flash editor?
https://www.wickeditor.com/#/about/
PlayerIO is the fast, easy, scalable & reliable way to build online games. Features such as BigDB, GameFS, Sitebox and Multiplayer makes it possible to build large complex online games without hosting a single server yourself.
Another similar service colyseus.io: https://www.colyseus.io/
Write your game server in TypeScript/JavaScript. Integrate into your game using one of our client SDK’s. (See presentation overview, and more examples)
Level Editor designed by the developers of Dead Cells
Game design resources:
https://departmentofplay.net/category/blog/
https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog
Ball base todo ‘list’
BeepBox
BeepBox is an online tool for sketching and sharing instrumental melodies.
All song data is contained in the URL at the top of your browser. When you make changes to the song, the URL is updated to reflect your changes. When you are satisfied with your song, just copy and paste the URL to save and share your song!
Smithsonian Open Access
Looks like lots of images and models to use freely
Learning about shaders:
https://www.youtube.com/c/DanMoranGameDev/videos
Blog on hashnode free: https://hashnode.com/
https://tools.kenney.nl/kenshape/
Maximo for characters and animations
Bitmap flow: https://bauxite.itch.io/bitmapflow
Free documentation hosting: https://readthedocs.org/
Indie Marketing playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoZS-4WQ8F2SPvAfnOfTRKOxzp27c1rYY
Another communication, shared workspace thing by Jetbrains
https://www.jetbrains.com/space
Gridbuilder add on for Blender: https://gumroad.com/l/VthLyO
Localisation ML translations: https://www.deepl.com/translator
Procedural Sprite Tool https://encelo.itch.io/spookyghost
https://www.gridsagegames.com/rexpaint/index.html
Another tile based map level editor: https://ogmo-editor-3.github.io/
Dragon bones
http://dragonbones.com/en/index.html#.YMhNq4xR1hE
Shader tutorials (Unity?)
https://minionsart.github.io/tutorials/
https://www.ark-vcs.com/ VC for games specifically
https://randoma11y.com/?s=09 color blind palettes
https://xnapper.com/ Mac screen capture (replacement for Skitch?)
https://loading.io/ – free loading icons (CC0)
Lots of CC X models https://huggingface.co/datasets/allenai/objaverse
Backgrounds
Flat UI colors
Art version control, still very new: https://mudstack.com/
Game Design resources: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QhFyPfYSjHv7PjibGrslF3mNW_CIDXWv9o-iQgLbu1o/edit#gid=2131031661
Docs on funding, resources etc https://jackymartin.gumroad.com/
Fun kid centric games engine
https://sokpop.itch.io/sok-stories
Bitmap fonts for asian languages
https://github.com/TakWolf/ark-pixel-font
https://opengameart.org/content/lanapixel-localization-friendly-pixel-font
https://itch.io/game-assets/tag-chinese/tag-pixel-art
https://alexclay.itch.io/arabic-pixel-font-b
https://www.derek-lieu.com/ video editing
https://games-stats.com/ Video Game Industry Statistics and Facts
https://kbee.app/ wikis from GDrive
