Freemium Software

Asset Forge makes models by kitbashing: drop blocks from its kits into a scene, snap them together, recolor them and export the result as a model or as rendered 2D sprites.

Avoyd edits and renders voxel scenes with billions of voxels, with a custom smoothing algorithm and imports for Minecraft maps.

GDevelop builds games out of events - conditions and actions picked from a list - rather than code, which makes it a common first engine. It handles tilemaps, 2D lighting, physics and multiplayer, exports to web, desktop and mobile, and the underlying engine is open source.

GameMaker is a 2D-first engine with a built-in sprite editor and room editor, used by many of the best known pixel art games.

Pixel Studio is a pixel art editor that runs on desktop, phone and tablet with the same project open on all of them. It covers layers, animation with onion skinning, tilesets and palettes, and reads and writes Aseprite files, which makes it a practical way to keep drawing away from a desk.

Resprite is a pixel art and animation editor for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS, built around a touch interface without losing the tools a desktop editor has: pixel-perfect lines, alpha lock, dithering patterns, custom brushes, gradients and symmetry. It imports and exports GIF, sprite sheets, PSD and APNG.

SunVox combines a pattern tracker with a modular synthesizer, and runs the same on desktops, phones and the web.

TIC-80 is an open source fantasy console in the PICO-8 mould with a larger screen, several scripting languages, and built-in sprite, map, sound and music editors.

Unity is a general-purpose game engine with a well-worn 2D pipeline: a sprite editor and atlas packer, a tilemap system with rule tiles, 2D lights and shadows, and a large asset store. It is heavier than the dedicated 2D engines, and in return it goes anywhere.

dotpict is a phone app for drawing pixel art, built around a community that posts and comments on what it makes. The canvas is deliberately small and the tools are few, which suits short sessions and daily practice more than long production work.