Hey everyone! I’ve been thinking about my daily game dev setup and realized I’m always switching between the same handful of programs. Right now I’m constantly jumping between Unity, Photoshop, and Substance Painter for most of my projects. It got me curious about what other developers rely on for their workflow. Do most people stick to similar industry standard tools or does everyone have their own unique combination of software they prefer? I’m wondering if there are some hidden gems I’m missing out on that could improve my productivity. Would love to hear what your go-to applications are and maybe why you chose them over alternatives. Always looking to streamline my process and learn from other people’s experiences in this field.
Switching from Unity to Godot was huge for me - the node system just clicks, and the licensing is way better. Aseprite’s been a lifesaver for pixel art and animations, makes everything so much smoother. For audio, Reaper gives you almost everything Pro Tools does but costs way less. I do all my scripting in VS Code with the right extensions for whatever language I’m using. Oh, and Figma might sound weird for game dev, but it’s actually perfect for UI mockups and level layouts since it’s free and easy to share with teammates.
I work mostly with mobile games and my setup’s pretty different. GameMaker Studio is fantastic for 2D development, especially cross-platform stuff. GML takes some learning but it’s powerful once you get it. For version control, I actually use Perforce over Git with large assets - the locking prevents merge conflicts on binary files and saves me tons of headaches. Krita completely replaced Photoshop for me and handles concept art beautifully. I use Notion for project management since it combines docs, tasks, and asset organization. The database features are great for tracking game objects and properties. Learned the hard way that too many tools slow you down more than they help. I keep my toolkit lean and focus on mastering each program instead of constantly switching between alternatives.
After trying different setups for years, I stick with Unreal Engine now - visual scripting makes prototyping so much faster.
Visual Studio for coding. The debugger plays nice with Unreal.
GIMP handles my art needs. Does 90% of what Photoshop does without paying monthly.
Trello for task management. Tried Jira but it’s way too much for solo projects.
FL Studio for audio - been using it since college. Once you nail the workflow, it beats most other DAWs.
This breakdown might spark some ideas:
Pro tip: don’t switch tools mid-project unless something’s completely broken. Relearning workflows will kill your productivity every time.
blender is like a game changer for me. it’s free and the animation tools are top notch, way better than paying for maya. construct 3 is an often overlooked gem for 2d games since it just runs in your browser. and yeah, gotta have discord for team chat and git/github for version control. losing work is the worst! audacity is great too for all my audio edits, plus it’s free.
All these tools are solid, but constantly switching between programs killed my productivity until I automated the boring stuff.
I use Unity, Blender, VS Code, Git, and Audacity. Pretty standard.
What changed everything was building automated workflows for repetitive tasks. Art assets sync from Blender to Unity when files change. Builds package automatically and push to different platforms. My testing pipeline catches bugs before I waste time on broken builds. The time saved is insane.
The real game changer isn’t just good tools - it’s connecting them so they work together without babysitting every step. Most devs waste too much time on manual file management and build processes.
Latenode makes this easy to set up. You can connect your game dev tools and automate workflows between them without writing complex scripts.