Best Game Development Software with a Free Trial

Visual Studio is Microsoft’s comprehensive integrated development environment (IDE) for .NET and C++ developers on Windows. It offers a rich set of tools including code editing, debugging, compiling, and graphical designers to enhance every stage of software development. With powerful AI-powered features like GitHub Copilot, it assists developers in generating, refactoring, and debugging code faster and more accurately. Visual Studio supports building applications for any platform or device, streamlining collaboration with real-time teamwork tools. It integrates advanced debugging tools such as memory analysis and root cause insights to catch issues early. Trusted by millions, Visual Studio accelerates productivity by combining developer control with intelligent assistance.

Live stream and record your content with ease & share it to streaming services like Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Mixer, etc. Start your broadcast today. XSplit is a live streaming and recording software designed for gaming, presentations and live events. This AI-powered software allows game developers to start live streaming of their games in pristine quality. The software also has a multilingual support team to assist you 24/7. Currently there are four members in the XSplit family: XSplit Broadcaster XSplit Gamecaster XSplit VCam XSplit Express Video Editor

With Buildbox, creating games is simple. There is no programming needed. Choose from various templates, Smart Assets™, or Brainboxes™ to get started. Then preview your game in real-time. You can even make your own game from scratch. The only limit is your imagination. Buildbox 3 is our most advanced game creation software! With it, you can create both 3D and 2D games using no-code Smart Assets™ and Brainboxes™ or advanced low-code options. Buildbox Classic is our traditional drag and drop game maker. With it you can make a game without coding, and rapidly build and prototype 2D games only using templates. At Buildbox, we believe that creating games is for everyone. With our powerful software, we're breaking down the barriers of game development for creators like you. We believe that anyone should get the opportunity to bring their ideas to life. The only skill you need is imagination. And we're just getting started!

C++Builder is a fast, integrated design and development suite for modern apps. Are you ready to design the best UIs of your life? Our award winning VCL framework for Windows and FireMonkey (FMX) visual framework for cross-platform UIs provide you with the foundation for intuitive, beautiful user interfaces that wow on every platform: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. Design your master UI layout once, then easily customize platform- and device-specific views without duplication of design effort. Drag-and-drop visual and non-visual components from the palette using our visual designer. Visually connect user interface elements to data sources using the LiveBindings Designer. Real-time design validation using Live On-Device Preview to broadcast the active form to multiple devices simultaneously. Add responsive design with resolution-aware components for desktop, tablets, and smartphones. Real, platform-specific native controls for an improved user experience.

Innovate with Realtime Features: We take care of realtime communication infrastructure so you can focus on your app. Our Platform for Realtime Communication: A platform to build and operate real-time interactivity for web, mobile, AI/ML, IoT, and Edge computing applications Faster & Easier Deployments: SDK support for 50+ mobile, web, server, and IoT environments (PubNub and community supported) and more than 65 pre-built integrations with external and third-party APIs to give developers the features they need regardless of programming language or tech stack. Scalability: The industry’s most scalable platform capable of supporting millions of concurrent users and allows for rapid growth with low latency, high uptime, and without financial penalties. Security & Compliance: Enterprise-grade security and compliance with the most stringent regulations worldwide, including GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and CCPA.

Interactive stories are complex by nature. articy:draft 3 is helping hundreds of game writers, narrative designers and other interactive storytellers to keep track of all their storylines and manage their narrative content in a visual way. Write branching dialogue with ease, reference characters and items in text to keep all your context at hand, create templates to adapt the information to your story world, add global variables, script your story logic and test it right inside articy:draft in a visual way, before you write a single piece of code. When done, the helpful exports to Unity, Unreal or JSON will help you get all your content into the engine of your choice. Download the FREE Standalone version and start exploring all your interactive story ideas right away.

Character Creator (CC) is a full character creation solution for designers to easily generate, import and customize stylized or realistic character assets for use with iClone, Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine, Unity, or any other 3D tools. CC connects industry-leading pipelines with one system for 3D character generation, animation rigging, asset management, look-dev rendering, and interactive design. Whether humans, creatures or props, creativity is no longer limited by the existing CC character base. Any rigged biped models can be imported, characterized, and facial rigged in Character Creator. New features now make any character compatible with thousands of motion assets, ready for natural lip-sync, motion capture, and animation controls in iClone. CC characters can also be optimized for low-poly, high-performance crowd simulation, AR, VR, and Metaverse.

devtodev is an ultimate product analytics platform for data-driven teams to get valuable insights and influence user decisions. With devtodev you can convert users into paying users, improve in-app economics, predict churn, revenue and customer lifetime value, as well as analyze and influence user behavior.

Assembla is the most secure software development platform in the world. Get started in less than a minute, on-prem or in the cloud. Assembla SECUREGIT provides a fully supported and economical solution, on the infrastructure of your choice. Meet compliance requirements with the confidence that your data is protected. Assembla is your trusted partner on your journey to “what’s next.” Developers are not security engineers – they build code. And their code is typically 90% open source. Securing all that open source codes requires automation. Assembla SecureGit scans for secret key credentials and vulnerable component dependencies automatically, as developers commit code. Our operational playbook includes a bottom-up evaluation of the risks to security, risk mitigation techniques, and ongoing areas of investment to further reduce risks. Assembla is fully committed to GDPR with data centers in the EU.

Incredibuild is the leading platform for development acceleration. Our platform speeds up developer and CI builds with our distribution and caching technologies, cutting down wait times from hours and days to minutes. Most importantly, we do so without changing your code, tools, or processes, on prem or on the cloud. Incredibuild gives you better visibility into your builds, significant acceleration, and smarter build asset orchestration for 8-10x faster builds. 200,000 devs and managers at over 2,000 companies, including world-leading brands like Microsoft, Amazon, Citibank, Adobe, Disney, Intel, Samsung, EPIC Games, Nintendo, and many more rely on Incredibuild to turbocharge their development and continuously delight their customers.

Xsolla is the video game ecommerce platform powered by Transaction Engine and Business Engine to help developers and publishers market, sell, connect and optimize their games globally. Serving only the video game industry, the Xsolla Transaction Engine and Business Engine work seamlessly together to solve the complexities of distribution, marketing and monetization so developers, publishers and platform partners can increase their audience, sales and revenue. Market, sell, connect, and optimize your game with one platform, powered by Xsolla Transaction Engine and Business Engine. Accessible solutions that combine our products, industry connections, and expertise to meet your company’s specific needs. Great games can emerge anywhere. We at Xsolla are here to ensure the best ideas get made, get seen, and get played. So we've built a suite of products that remove the barriers between creators and the support they need.

The game industry's most powerful backend platform. Sign up for a developer account and explore all the ways you can control your game with Azure PlayFab's easy-to-use web interface. Ready to start integrating your game? Pick your SDK, fill in your credentials, and you're off and running! Everything you need to build and operate a live game. Meet players where they are and connect them with friends on any platform. Dynamically scale dedicated multiplayer servers. Keep players coming back for more. Gain immediate insight into game performance and potential issues. Import, store, process and export data generated by your games. Comply with GDPR, COPPA and other government regulations. Process payments, manage virtual currency, sell catalog items and guard against fraud. Help players build relationships and communities. Configure custom operations and react to events in real-time. Set up your virtual economy, add leaderboards or craft the perfect matchmaking logic.

Create and animate realistic-looking characters, props, and environments using the sophisticated 3D modeling and animation tools in Maya LT™ 3D game development software. Send assets directly to Unity and Unreal Engine with custom export tools, or use the game exporter to get 3D content into your engine of choice. Use an array of tools to create high-quality textures and materials. Work with Allegorithmic Substance materials directly in the software.

The developer platform for AI characters. Get a fully integrated platform for AI characters that goes beyond large language models (LLMs), and adds configurable safety, knowledge, memory, narrative controls, multimodality, and more. Craft characters with distinct personalities and contextual awareness that stay in-world or on brand. Seamlessly integrate into real-time applications, with optimization for scale and performance built-in. Optimized for real-time experiences, Inworld offers low-latency interactions that scale with your application. Orchestrating across LLMs allows us to deliver high-quality interactions with faster inference and lower costs. Every interaction has a context and models need to be aware of yours. Add custom knowledge, content and safety guardrails, and narrative controls to keep your AI in character, in-world, or on brand. Put personality at the center of your AI. Our multimodal AI mimics the full range of human expression.

P4 (formerly Helix Core) is an enterprise-grade version control system designed to manage the complexities of modern software development. It allows teams to store, track, and manage all digital assets—ranging from source code to 3D models—with unprecedented scalability. P4 is ideal for large, distributed teams working on large-scale projects, offering powerful collaboration tools, seamless integrations, and advanced branching capabilities. With strong support for both centralized and distributed workflows, P4 enhances productivity and efficiency, making it a top choice for software, game, and hardware development teams.

Google Cloud for Games provides a comprehensive suite of cloud-based solutions designed to support game developers, studios, and publishers in building, scaling, and managing their games efficiently. It offers powerful infrastructure for global multiplayer experiences, real-time data analytics, AI-driven game operations, and live service management. With managed services like dedicated game servers, player matchmaking, and database solutions, developers can focus on gameplay innovation while ensuring reliability and performance. Google Cloud’s tools also enable studios to personalize player experiences, optimize monetization strategies, and leverage machine learning for fraud detection and content recommendations. By integrating seamlessly with popular game engines and development workflows, Google Cloud for Games empowers teams to accelerate development, enhance player engagement, and scale their operations globally.

Grids allows you to rapidly prototype and develop your games using all kinds of regular and semi-regular grids, including rectangular, isometric, hexagonal, triangular and polar grids. Grids is a GML script library for GameMaker that allows you to build games with various types of grids, including hexagonal (pointy and flat), rectangular and diamond grids. We specialize in Unity software development for games and tools. We build software specific to your requirements to solve the challenges that are unique to your game. We can also help you with the development of your entire game, big or small. Check out our portfolio to find out more. Grids Pro allows you to rapidly prototype and develop your games using all kinds of regular and semi-regular grids, including rectangular, isometric, hexagonal, triangular and polar grids. You can define your own 1D, 2D and 3D grids or customize size and shape to build your own unique games. Just set your grids up in the editor or build them in code.

Wwise is a cross-platform interactive audio middleware solution for software developers who need to integrate interactive audio into video games and other immersive audio projects. Wwise increases the productivity and creativity of the entire team, simplifies the work of programmers, and empowers audio teams to deliver superior immersive gaming and interactive audio experiences. Wwise offers real-time in-game preview capabilities and a rich set of functionalities, including sound authoring, dynamic mixing, 3D spatial audio, interactive music, and synthesis. Wwise integrates seamlessly with all major game development platforms, including Unreal Engine, Unity, Cryengine, and many others. Developers also have access to complete API and SDK toolkits. Over 1000 game and AR/VR titles are developed every year using Wwise, and with partnerships with the largest developers worldwide, 70% of the global AAA game market uses Wwise.

Meshy is a 3D generative AI production suite. Use our AI texturing and AI modeling tools to accelerate 3D content creation. Our AI texturing tool allows artists to choose either text prompts or 2D concept art, as well as an untextured model as input. AI will do the automatic texturing for your model in less than 3 minutes. With our art-directable AI modeling tool, artists can easily craft 3D models from reference images or text prompts, without having to use 3D sculpting or scanning tools like ZBrush or RealityCapture, while still generating impressive, high-poly 3D models. Stop losing days for modeling and texturing. 3D can be done in minutes. Generate 3D directly from 2D. No need to be a professional prompter. Upload your model and write anything you can imagine with the model in the prompt box. You'll receive a textured model in only less than 3 minutes! Our goal is to automate the whole 3D production pipeline with generative AI.

Use AWS CloudFormation templates to power backend game features. Deliver core functionality to your players using prebuilt AWS solutions. Use sample assets and code to rapidly develop game feature prototypes. AWS GameKit is a game engine integration toolkit that helps you create cloud-connected game features without the learning curve of using cloud service architecture. Quickly start prototyping active game projects with ready-to-use backend game features, open-source code, and documentation. Use solutions built by cloud architecture experts, based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework, that are secure, high-performing, and resilient. Use the AWS GameKit plugin in your game engine to configure and deploy supporting AWS resources for your cloud-based game features. Use AWS tools to monitor, scale, and customize backend services, and control your data generated and stored on AWS.

RallyHere is an all-in-one platform designed to support game developers in building, managing, and launching live-service, cross-platform games with ease. It provides a robust suite of backend tools, including player authentication, matchmaking, session management, server orchestration, and data-driven insights. With seamless integrations for Unreal Engine and Unity, RallyHere helps studios accelerate development, lower operational costs, and tackle the challenges of multiplayer game creation. Trusted by millions of players across popular titles like SMITE, Paladins, and Rogue Company, the platform ensures reliability and scalability. Backed by a team of industry experts, RallyHere serves as a trusted partner, empowering developers at every stage of their journey.

Metaplay is a powerful backend solution tailored for live-service Unity games, offering developers a fully customizable and scalable infrastructure. With its unique approach, game logic is written once in C# and seamlessly shared between client and server, ensuring consistency and efficiency. The platform's data-driven architecture allows developers to modify game economies and content dynamically, enabling real-time updates without requiring new client releases. Metaplay also provides advanced tools for debugging, testing, and offline development, streamlining the entire workflow. By offering full source code access, it grants developers complete ownership and flexibility, making it a superior alternative to traditional in-house backend systems.