7 Useful Mobile Game Development Tools in 2021

The purpose of every tool is to assist you in work and make your life easy. Game development tools also serve the same purpose. They make your game development process less complicated to let you put the best on the table. There were small pixelated games like Super Mario, which used to pass the time and kill boredom in the old days. Now, the environment and generation are in a completely new form. Gaming is now beyond entertainment and is a potentially high revenue-generating industry. People of all gender and age groups have seriously adopted gaming as a full-time profession and earning their bread.

The one primary reason for the game industry’s growth is the rising sale and use of tablets and smartphones. Game applications are flooding Apple and Google App stores and hitting thousands of downloads. The concept of cloud gaming and games based on real money is also rising with that. Market forecasters believe that the gaming industry will exceed the 100 billion U.S. dollar figure by 2023. Also, there are several game genres, out of which shooting, survival, multiplayer, and role-playing games (RPG) are famous and trending. To second this trend, PUBG Mobile is the game ruling on every phone and tablet.

However, developers need the best game development tools to build and design such interactive games in 2021. Following are the eight suggested tools and engines for beginners and experts to transform their imaginative world into a 2D and 3D world.

1. Unity

Unity from Unity technologies comes among the powerful and well-known game development engines. It is a cross-platform environment that lets you create your 3D and 2D interactive and astonishing games on multiple platforms via a single codebase. As it is a cross-development platform, the developer does not have to write code multiple times for different platforms.

More overly, a developer can import assets in Unity from sources like 3Ds Max, Maya, and Blender. That’s not it; it has a dedicated marketplace to let you download and use free and paid modules in the game development. Any beginner who is new to the field can quickly begin his journey with this user-friendly engine. Unity documentation and tutorials are beneficial to get a good and progressive start.

Platforms Unity Support:

Android

iOS

Windows

Fire OS

Tizen OS

2. Unreal Engine

Epic games have built the Unreal Engine for creating realistic games. For developing heavy RPG and shooting games, do not look here or there; Unreal Engine is more than enough. To let you know this engine’s capability, the all-time favorite game PUBG Mobile is the product of this engine, breaking all barriers currently. Physically-based rendering, dynamic shadows, and custom post-processing are some of the Unreal powers.

Along with realistic 3D games, the platform also supports virtual reality games for different devices. C++ programming language makes scripting visuals and defining actions easy and quick. Survival and fighting games designed on this engine works very well and offer realistic graphics to the gamers. Unreal graphics rendering quality is the best among all game engines. Creators can provide 3D models, sounds, code snippets, and other assets with it.

Platforms Unreal Support:

Xbox

PlayStation

Mac

Windows Desktops

HTML5

iOS

Android

VR

Linux

SteamOS

3. Godot Engine

Godot engine is free to use open-source tool for commercial and personal use. The developer can edit and modify the engine as per their needs. No requirements for having subscriptions, royalties, or tributes. The core concept of video games and C++ programming is enough to start with the development. 2D and 3D games are not complicated to create with Godot. It offers a development environment quite similar to the paid game engines without affecting the developer’s wallet. All these attributes make this platform preferable for game developers.

Platforms Godot Support:

Android

UWP

Windows

iOS

macOS

Linux

4. SpriteKit

In the list of game engines, Apple also has an exciting tool to offer game developers. For developing a high-quality 2D game, SpriteKit supports objective C and Swift, offering rich benefits to the developer. If you are the game creator and want to build a game specifically for the Apple platform, SpriteKit should be in your kit. Additionally, there is no need to download external libraries or additional resources to move with development.

Platforms SpriteKit Support:

iOS

5. Amazon’s Lumberyard

Amazon is not only for shopping but for gaming also. Their engine is called Amazon’s Lumberyard. The developer can leverage this game engine for developing all kinds of mobile games. As it is a cross-platform development environment, the creator can target multiple platforms while writing a code once. Because of integration with Twitch, a developer can develop visual content that can provide entertainment to users. The library range in Amazon Lumberyard is quite extensive and enough to build a high-quality game.

Rich sound engine based on Audiokinetic, C++ language support, networking, AWS cloud, and Twitch API is some of this engine’s features.

Platforms Amazon’s Lumberyard Support:

iOS

PlayStation 4

Xbox One

Android

PC

6. Buildbox

If you want to build a game quickly, without having much technical expertise, make it with Buildbox. This game engine is relatively easy to use. You do not need to write a code. Just select images and assets to import, attach a function to them, and see how objects take shape into a game. The only effort you have to make here is to drag and drop items in a scene like characters, environment objects, terrain, and other related things. It seems impossible to create a game without coding or scripting, but Buildbox has made it impossible possible. Designers, entrepreneurs, and people who lack programming skills can efficiently utilize this engine to give their imagination a digital life without being technical or coding experts.

Platforms Buildbox Support:

iOS

7. Cocos2d-x

Cocos2D-x is a development tool for games from Facebook. As it is a Facebook tool, you can expect detailed documentation, a responsive developers’ community, and a brief explanation about the tool. The description is quite helpful and easy to digest to make a start and learn about the process. The tool focuses on creating content and bundled with entity-component, script development, and data-driven development tools. Games developers develop with this tool are inherit with high performance and optimized. For simplifying resource management, previewing, game debugging, and multi-platform publishing, Cocos2d-x incorporates an all-in-one extensible editor.

Platforms Cocos2d-x Support:

HTML5

Windows

iOS

Android

Mac

8. Solar2D (Bonus)

Solar2D is the new name of ‘Corona SDK,’ a cross-development platform based on Lua programming language. Lua is relatively easy to adopt in your arsenal as it is easy to grip. Solar2D have several plugins in their asset store, which comes quite handy while developing. Two prime reasons for Solar2D popularity are the straightforward documentation and the supportive community. For showing you how the app will affect after making a specific change, Solar2D also offers a real-time simulation.

Platforms Solar2D Support:

iOS

Android

macOS

tvOS

Android TV

Windows

HTML5

Linux

To Sum Up

These are the few highlighted game development tools out of hundreds of options. You can say that these are the widely used tools among mobile game developers to assist them in developing a top-class game.

However, one must analyze the demand and requirements before opting for the platform. Selecting a medium could be a tough decision to make, but hard work always pays off!