this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
50 points (100.0% liked)
Game Development
6133 readers
6 users here now
Welcome to the game development community! This is a place to talk about and post anything related to the field of game development.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'll join the chorus recommending Godot. A lot lighter than Unity or Unreal, it's open source, well documented and quite capable. It's got a lot of features, in a lot of ways it isn't "dead simple."
I might recommend starting off using Python's Pygame library. Do something like create Flappy Bird in it, that will give you a pretty good idea of how a video game works under the hood, and it'll run on a potato.
For pixel art you might go with LibreSprite or Pixelorama. These will allow you to create tile sets for backgrounds as well as character sprites.
If you're looking to get into 3D art, you've basically got to go with Blender.
"Lightweight" and "small" isn't the same as simple. People seriously gotta stop recommending godot to beginners. It's good as a general engine, but a lot to take in for a beginner.
Pygame is a great choice. I would add Love2D as a similar alternative if you don't jive with Python.
Off topic but Godot has a serious cult problem. Say anything that could possibly be interpreted as negative about it, and you're going to get someone writing a very emotional response. It's pretty much at the Apple fan boy level, which is bad but mostly weird.
objectively the one with the cult is a good recommendation for a beginner since there's a strong community making content, arguably the most important factor in choosing something
godot also has a lot of stuff baked in, so the community tends to use the built in solution for everything. you won't end up with one tutorial recommending a collision engine that makes assumptions that don't work with the other tutorial for different pathfinding or whatever. they all start with basically the same assumptions.
pygame is a little intimidating since you start with an empty file and a pygame import. there's no real enforced or even commonly followed structure beyond that. beginners can figure it out but it leaves a lot of architecture questions open for you so your tutorials probably won't line up well.
and I say all of that as someone who doesn't particularly enjoy godot, especially gdscript.