Wondering what programs can you use to create your own games for free?
These 5 game engines you can use for Free are more than capable of creating a polished game whether you are a hobbyist or a small studio.
Below is a list of items (most tried and tested) which you can use to create your game whether it is a personal project or something you want to monetise at a later date.
The 5 Game Engines
What programs can you use to create your own games for free? (in the beginning)
Adobe Animate
Adobe Animate is part of the Creative Cloud package. Although this application is only free as part of the demo version you can still try and test out your game.
If you like the program you can purchase the product at a lower cost if you are a student or a teacher.
Adobe Animate is great for making 2D games and animations which can either be played from your browser or downloaded as a stand-alone application (Adobe Air)
It should be noted, that if you do decide to use Adobe Animate you should avoid publishing your game as a Flash object (.SWF) as this format is becoming more and more defunct with many browsers no longer running it by default. Best avoid this SWF format.
Those are the facts about Adobe Animate. I will now give some opinions on the program.
Yes, Adobe Animate is a free game maker as Demo and you can create some great 2D games and animations. If you want to get serious with the application, you will have to buy it.
Adobe Animate is great for making 2D games and animations which can either be played from your browser or downloaded as a stand-alone application (Adobe Air)
But, the program doesn’t get as much love as it used to. In the heyday of Adobe Animate (which was known as flash then), there were 1000’s of games being created and published to the internet using this software.
I majored in part of studying using the application to create an E-learning and STEM game. I also used it on various commissions to promote or create games.
As the years have gone by newer and *completely free engines have come to the table where anyone can play and test their games straight after downloading their game. And you don’t even have to know how to code with some of them.
Adobe Animate is a great program and the Demo is free but I would consider some of the awesome modern and powerful options out there before investing your time in this software.
I will always have respect for Animate but I have started to find my love with newer game engines that offer great solutions.
Stencyl
Stencyl is also a free game engine to download.
And, if you don’t like coding or writing – you will probably like this application more to create a game.
Stencyl behaves a lot like building blocks when you assemble code and behaviours. The one major frustration I found with using this application to create a game is that it does seem to have it’s technical limitations once you try to get off the starter steps.
Some of the simpler challenges such as creating a cursor in Stencyl (as shown) can be done but I struggled to get it to work with any degree of sophistication. That is not to say that you can’t or won’t – there are developers out there that have created games and monetised what they have made by using Stencyl.
I think one of my favourite things about Stencyl (aside from being free to download) is that it’s great learning how to make games away without hard coding it together.
If coding scares you, then Stencyl could be a way to go.
Unity Software
I could write a whole lengthy article as to why Unity is a great and free gaming engine (I have an article already for that actually) and why you should consider it on its merits alone.
But, this article needs to give a level playing field as to which game engines are great to use and are free.
Unity is a very able program which can create 3D games, 2D, 2.5 D games, platformers – you name it, quite a lot in other words.
The downside is, you will struggle if you cannot code or don’t have a mindset for coding. To get truly great results, you will need to code Unity in C Sharp to make something great.
The one big thing that bridges that knowledge gap (if coding isn’t your thing), is the asset store. It should be noted though that the asset store isn’t a silver bullet.
You can purchase many ‘assets’ and templates to do a lot of the heavy lifting for your game which makes Unity very appealing. There are even some free assets in store which you can use in your can ranging from 3D models to a range of furniture.
If at some stage you start to earn a substantial amount from your game, then you will need to pay the professional fees for the license to use Unity.
Why not take a look for yourself! Download Unity Software
Winter Mute Engine
Winter Mute Engine is a fair and free open-source engine that makes full 2D or 2.5 adventure games. It is a good engine if you want to create some classic adventures and point and click game as it comes with many of the tools needed to have a ready to deploy game
You can see examples of what can be created in Wintermute by following this link to the Dead Code website.
In the past, Winter mute had a very active forum with its active users willing to help you out as when needed.
In my opinion, the main limitation to using the Winter Mute engine is that is predominately geared towards Windows PCs and general activity around it – isn’t as powerful as some of the others out there.
It should also be noted that if you intend to use Winter Mute you will need to code the game to work.
You can find out whether Winter mute is the Engine for you. As you can see by some of the examples you can see at can produce some excellent results with the know-how and talent.
Unreal Engine
Unreal Engine, like the other game engines mentioned in this post, is also free to download and can create both 2D and 3D games that look like AAA standards.
The great thing with Unreal Engine – setting aside that it is also free to download the program is that it can create some spectacular 3D visuals which are on par with epic games that see released on the Play Station or Xbox.
If you are intending on creating games with some punchy looking graphics and excellent lighting effects then Unreal could be the way forward for you.
On a personal level, I can only vouch for how good Unreal is visually and the quality of the games you can produce using this engine. You see an example of what can be created in Unreal here.
I have personally never developed anything in Unreal – I have just stood on the sideline and admire what can be created.
5 game engines you can use for free | Summary
I hope that is this post has offered some insight into what game engines and programs you can use to start creating your game for free today.
Some of the game engines are better at certain actions than others and I hope that this post has cleared up some of the patches of what you can and can’t do – mostly based on personal experience with using the engines.
Thank you for reading this post about what 5 game engines you can use for free. If you felt that this post was helpful and other game devs would benefit from reading it then do share.
Other handy resources to do with games
Adobe Animate Games
Stencyl
How to make a cursor in Stencyl
Unity Design + Development
Why Unity is great for your game
(external website) Unity experiments and game from the Dev Lab