Best Game Development Software for Startups
View:
Compare the Top Game Development Software for Startups as of July 2025
Sort By:
What is Game Development Software for Startups?
Game development software refers to a suite of tools and applications used to create video games, ranging from simple 2D projects to complex 3D experiences. It typically includes game engines, graphic design programs, audio editing tools, and coding environments for scripting game mechanics. Many platforms, like Unity and Unreal Engine, provide built-in physics, animation, and AI features to streamline development. Some software, such as Godot or RPG Maker, caters to specific genres or audiences with simplified workflows. By integrating various assets and code, game development software enables creators to bring interactive worlds to life across multiple platforms. Compare and read user reviews of the best Game Development software for Startups currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
-
1
Unity
Unity Technologies
The leading platform for creating interactive, real-time content. Build 2D, 3D and VR games and apps at speed. From artist tools to live-ops, everything you need to bring your vision to life today. The complete solutions for professionals to create and operate. Create and operate amazing applications and immersive experiences with a complete solution for professionals across industries. Change up your splash screen. Or completely remove it. Gain greater insight into what’s happening in your game with real-time data on crashes, exceptions and user feedback. Minimize downtime with access to expert technical support when you encounter issues. Available as a separate purchase through a Unity sales representative. Unity Gaming Services: backend and LiveOps services trusted by world-class studios to support multiplayer and live games at any scale, with any engine or tech stack.Starting Price: $35.00/month -
2
PubNub
PubNub
Innovate with Realtime Features: We take care of realtime communication infrastructure so you can focus on your app. Our Platform for Realtime Communication: A platform to build and operate real-time interactivity for web, mobile, AI/ML, IoT, and Edge computing applications Faster & Easier Deployments: SDK support for 50+ mobile, web, server, and IoT environments (PubNub and community supported) and more than 65 pre-built integrations with external and third-party APIs to give developers the features they need regardless of programming language or tech stack. Scalability: The industry’s most scalable platform capable of supporting millions of concurrent users and allows for rapid growth with low latency, high uptime, and without financial penalties. Security & Compliance: Enterprise-grade security and compliance with the most stringent regulations worldwide, including GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and CCPA.Starting Price: $0 -
3
articy:draft
Articy
Interactive stories are complex by nature. articy:draft 3 is helping hundreds of game writers, narrative designers and other interactive storytellers to keep track of all their storylines and manage their narrative content in a visual way. Write branching dialogue with ease, reference characters and items in text to keep all your context at hand, create templates to adapt the information to your story world, add global variables, script your story logic and test it right inside articy:draft in a visual way, before you write a single piece of code. When done, the helpful exports to Unity, Unreal or JSON will help you get all your content into the engine of your choice. Download the FREE Standalone version and start exploring all your interactive story ideas right away.Starting Price: €5.99 Single User per month -
4
Character Creator
Reallusion
Character Creator (CC) is a full character creation solution for designers to easily generate, import and customize stylized or realistic character assets for use with iClone, Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine, Unity, or any other 3D tools. CC connects industry-leading pipelines with one system for 3D character generation, animation rigging, asset management, look-dev rendering, and interactive design. Whether humans, creatures or props, creativity is no longer limited by the existing CC character base. Any rigged biped models can be imported, characterized, and facial rigged in Character Creator. New features now make any character compatible with thousands of motion assets, ready for natural lip-sync, motion capture, and animation controls in iClone. CC characters can also be optimized for low-poly, high-performance crowd simulation, AR, VR, and Metaverse.Starting Price: $299 -
5
Avoyd
enkisoftware
Avoyd Voxel Editor and Renderer Create, import, export and render large voxel worlds. 3D art and rendering tool for voxel artists, map builders and game developers. Main Features: - Large scenes up to 256k voxels a side. - CPU and GPU path traced rendering. - Export to optimised mesh glTF and OBJ with physically-based materials parameters, and VOX. - Import MagicaVoxel VOX, Minecraft maps, heightmaps, palettes. - Orthographic projection with Isometric presets. - Up to 65k physically based materials. - Physically based light and atmosphereStarting Price: €15 one-time payment -
6
devtodev
devtodev
devtodev is an ultimate product analytics platform for data-driven teams to get valuable insights and influence user decisions. With devtodev you can convert users into paying users, improve in-app economics, predict churn, revenue and customer lifetime value, as well as analyze and influence user behavior.Starting Price: Free -
7
Incredibuild
Incredibuild
Incredibuild is the leading platform for development acceleration. Our platform speeds up developer and CI builds with our distribution and caching technologies, cutting down wait times from hours and days to minutes. Most importantly, we do so without changing your code, tools, or processes, on prem or on the cloud. Incredibuild gives you better visibility into your builds, significant acceleration, and smarter build asset orchestration for 8-10x faster builds. 200,000 devs and managers at over 2,000 companies, including world-leading brands like Microsoft, Amazon, Citibank, Adobe, Disney, Intel, Samsung, EPIC Games, Nintendo, and many more rely on Incredibuild to turbocharge their development and continuously delight their customers.Starting Price: $0 -
8
Maya LT
Autodesk
Create and animate realistic-looking characters, props, and environments using the sophisticated 3D modeling and animation tools in Maya LT™ 3D game development software. Send assets directly to Unity and Unreal Engine with custom export tools, or use the game exporter to get 3D content into your engine of choice. Use an array of tools to create high-quality textures and materials. Work with Allegorithmic Substance materials directly in the software.Starting Price: $35 per month -
9
Inworld
Inworld
The developer platform for AI characters. Get a fully integrated platform for AI characters that goes beyond large language models (LLMs), and adds configurable safety, knowledge, memory, narrative controls, multimodality, and more. Craft characters with distinct personalities and contextual awareness that stay in-world or on brand. Seamlessly integrate into real-time applications, with optimization for scale and performance built-in. Optimized for real-time experiences, Inworld offers low-latency interactions that scale with your application. Orchestrating across LLMs allows us to deliver high-quality interactions with faster inference and lower costs. Every interaction has a context and models need to be aware of yours. Add custom knowledge, content and safety guardrails, and narrative controls to keep your AI in character, in-world, or on brand. Put personality at the center of your AI. Our multimodal AI mimics the full range of human expression.Starting Price: $20 per month -
10
Convai
Convai
Easy-to-use interface to create your characters' intelligence, and plugins to connect them to your character assets and worlds. Convai addresses the problem of information that occurs with large language models by adding a knowledge base for characters, which can help ensure accurate responses to user queries. Your characters can perceive the various objects and entities in the scene and execute actions based on your commands and requests or their own motivation. Create AI tutors in XR that can teach any subject with reliable expertise for K12 and universities. Enable AI-guided training applications in various domains such as healthcare, legal, manufacturing, eCommerce, etc.Starting Price: $6 per month -
11
Nakama
Heroic Labs
Nakama is an open source game server framework developed by Heroic Labs, designed to facilitate the creation of real-time, multiplayer, and social games across various platforms, including Godot, Unity, Unreal Engine, and more. It provides a comprehensive suite of features such as real-time multiplayer capabilities, customizable matchmaking algorithms, leaderboards, in-game chat, and support for in-game currencies. Developers can extend Nakama's functionality using server-side logic written in Go, TypeScript, or Lua, allowing for authoritative game mechanics and enhanced control over game state. The platform also offers open-source client libraries tailored for different game engines and languages, ensuring seamless integration and flexibility in game development. Nakama is your dedicated server, not another multi-tenant SaaS. Add custom features and secure authoritative gameplay logic directly to your game server.Starting Price: Free -
12
raylib
raylib
raylib is a simple and easy-to-use library to enjoy video game programming. It is a programming library to enjoy video game programming; no fancy interface, no visual helpers, no GUI tools or editors, just coding in a pure spartan-programmers way. raylib does not provide the typical API documentation or a big set of tutorials. The library is designed to be minimalistic and be learned just from a cheat sheet with all required functionality and a big collection of examples to see how to use that functionality. The best way to learn to code is by reading code. raylib supports multiple target platforms, it has been tested in the following ones but, technically, any platform that supports C language and OpenGL graphics (or similar) can run raylib or it can be very easily ported to. You can use raylib with multiple programming languages, there are over 60 bindings. raylib can be combined with several extra libraries for additional functionality.Starting Price: Free -
13
GameplayKit
Apple
GameplayKit is a collection of foundational tools and technologies for building games in iOS, OS X, and tvOS. Building, evolving, and maintaining a sophisticated game requires a well-planned design, GameplayKit provides architectural tools to help you design modular, scalable game architecture with minimal effort. Creating great games also requires deploying complex algorithms to solve the problems underlying common game mechanics, GameplayKit also provides standard implementations of such algorithms, allowing you to spend more time on the features that make your gameplay unique. Because GameplayKit is independent of high-level game engine technologies, you can combine it with any of those technologies to build a complete game, SpriteKit for 2D games, SceneKit for 3D games, or a custom or third-party game engine using Metal or OpenGL ES. For games with less demanding graphics needs, you can even use GameplayKit with UIKit (in iOS or tvOS) or AppKit (in OS X).Starting Price: Free -
14
Gamelogic
Gamelogic
Grids allows you to rapidly prototype and develop your games using all kinds of regular and semi-regular grids, including rectangular, isometric, hexagonal, triangular and polar grids. Grids is a GML script library for GameMaker that allows you to build games with various types of grids, including hexagonal (pointy and flat), rectangular and diamond grids. We specialize in Unity software development for games and tools. We build software specific to your requirements to solve the challenges that are unique to your game. We can also help you with the development of your entire game, big or small. Check out our portfolio to find out more. Grids Pro allows you to rapidly prototype and develop your games using all kinds of regular and semi-regular grids, including rectangular, isometric, hexagonal, triangular and polar grids. You can define your own 1D, 2D and 3D grids or customize size and shape to build your own unique games. Just set your grids up in the editor or build them in code. -
15
Ready Player Me
Wolf3D
Ready Player Me is a cross-game avatar platform for the metaverse. It lets you create a 3D avatar with a selfie and use it in 600+ compatible apps and games. You can explore virtual worlds in VRChat, join meetings in MeetinVR, or stream to your fans using LIV – all with your personal avatar that represents you in virtual worlds. Any developer can integrate Ready Player Me into their apps and games using our free avatar SDK. It's compatible with Unity and Unreal Engine and works great on the web, mobile, and desktop platforms.Starting Price: Free -
16
Hologress META-TAILOR
Hologress
With META-TAILOR, You can dress 3D characters the way you dress. Naturally, layer and style clothes to make game-ready outfits. Build outfits using our expansive clothing library. Combine hundreds of high-quality 3D clothes. With more added all the time. You can also import your own clothes obj. Craft game-ready 3D outfits in a way that is familiar and natural. Enjoy unlimited exports from our clothing library. Import characters from popular 3D platforms. Enjoy game-ready topology. Standard on all of our clothes. Skip straight to animation, with automatic skin weights. New features, updates, and 3D clothes are added all the time. Transfer characters to target platforms in just a few clicks. Clean, game-ready, low poly mesh topology. Animation ready with auto-skin weighs generation. Its sucks when you're trying to create something great, only to be delayed by overly technical workflows. META-TAILOR takes the time & difficulty out of putting fitted clothes onto real-time 3D characters.Starting Price: $299 one-time payment -
17
Wwise
Audiokinetic
Wwise is a cross-platform interactive audio middleware solution for software developers who need to integrate interactive audio into video games and other immersive audio projects. Wwise increases the productivity and creativity of the entire team, simplifies the work of programmers, and empowers audio teams to deliver superior immersive gaming and interactive audio experiences. Wwise offers real-time in-game preview capabilities and a rich set of functionalities, including sound authoring, dynamic mixing, 3D spatial audio, interactive music, and synthesis. Wwise integrates seamlessly with all major game development platforms, including Unreal Engine, Unity, Cryengine, and many others. Developers also have access to complete API and SDK toolkits. Over 1000 game and AR/VR titles are developed every year using Wwise, and with partnerships with the largest developers worldwide, 70% of the global AAA game market uses Wwise.Starting Price: Free for Indie developers -
18
AWS GameKit
Amazon
Use AWS CloudFormation templates to power backend game features. Deliver core functionality to your players using prebuilt AWS solutions. Use sample assets and code to rapidly develop game feature prototypes. AWS GameKit is a game engine integration toolkit that helps you create cloud-connected game features without the learning curve of using cloud service architecture. Quickly start prototyping active game projects with ready-to-use backend game features, open-source code, and documentation. Use solutions built by cloud architecture experts, based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework, that are secure, high-performing, and resilient. Use the AWS GameKit plugin in your game engine to configure and deploy supporting AWS resources for your cloud-based game features. Use AWS tools to monitor, scale, and customize backend services, and control your data generated and stored on AWS. -
19
Satori LiveOps
Heroic Labs
Satori is a LiveOps platform designed to enhance player retention, engagement, and monetization in live service games. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools, including event capture, dynamic event calendars, remote configuration, experimentation, analytics, and personalized player messaging. With Satori, game studios and publishers can easily build and deploy live events, battle passes, offers, messages, and push notifications. The platform enables the personalization of rewards, allowing players to receive premium incentives for achievements, purchases, and platform exclusives. Additionally, Satori facilitates the dynamic unlocking of new content, creating deep and engaging gameplay experiences that automatically reveal new material as players reach goals or complete purchases. It also allows for targeted player engagement, enabling studios to drill down to specific player segments or individual players to offer exclusive content and foster community growth. Built by the developersStarting Price: $600 per month -
20
OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit, to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering. Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) began developing OpenGL in 1991 and released it on June 30, 1992. It is used for a variety of applications, including computer-aided design (CAD), video games, scientific visualization, virtual reality, and flight simulation. The OpenGL Registry contains specifications of the core API and shading language; specifications of Khronos- and vendor-approved OpenGL extensions; header files corresponding to the specifications; and related documentation including specifications, extensions, and headers for the GLX, WGL, and GLU APIs. -
21
NVIDIA Reflex
NVIDIA
NVIDIA Reflex is a suite of technologies designed to optimize system latency, enhancing responsiveness in competitive gaming. By synchronizing CPU and GPU operations, Reflex reduces the time between input and display, enabling faster target acquisition and improved aim precision. The latest iteration, Reflex 2, introduces Frame Warp technology, which updates game frames based on the most recent mouse input just before rendering, further decreasing latency by up to 75%. Reflex is supported in numerous popular titles and integrates with compatible monitors and peripherals to provide real-time latency metrics, allowing gamers to fine-tune their systems for optimal performance. NVIDIA G-SYNC displays with Reflex Analyzer feature the world’s only system latency measurement that detects clicks coming from Reflex-compatible gaming mice and measures the time for the resulting pixels (gun muzzle flash) to change on the screen.Starting Price: $749.99 one-time payment -
22
brainCloud
bitHeads
brainCloud is a ready-made backend for the development of connected apps, games, and much more! Using brainCloud, developers can leverage pre-built features to jumpstart the building of great new products, without having to re-invent the wheel. The brainCloud BaaS includes feature-rich mobile back-end, including cloud data, identity + device management, data collection, push notifications, analytics, etc. brainCloud gets you up and running quickly with a best-in-class Design Portal, native libraries, great examples and fantastic support. Everything you need to rapidly design, build, debug and support your apps comes standard. brainCloud goes beyond the basics because we understand the needs of your development team. Simply put, brainCloud costs less. We offer low-cost plans with affordable elastic pricing. You pay according to how much, or how little, your app uses our services. Start your free trial today and don’t pay until you go live.Starting Price: $30.00/month -
23
Improbable
Improbable
Improbable Multiplayer Services (IMS) is an ever-evolving ecosystem of tools and services dedicated to optimizing how games as a service are built and operated. The first title from our in-house studios, Scavengers is a new kind of shooter where players fight for survival in a world ravaged by ice storms and swarming with hostile AI. Find out how Midwinter Entertainment worked with Improbable Multiplayer Services to make it all possible. Need help with distributed physics or open world generation? How about the infrastructure and tooling for operating a GaaS? The Multiplayer Guys are the only co-development studio focussed exclusively on multiplayer game solutions. Together with our ecosystem of partners, Improbable’s defence business is helping governments and defence organisations meet the fluid, fast-moving and endlessly complex security challenges they face. -
24
Hiber
Hiber
Hiber is a social media and entertainment platform that enables anyone to express themselves. The team originally created HiberWorld as a place for people to create their own 3D interactive experiences and share them with others, without the need to code. Initially, everything was browser-based and in 2019 we reached a major milestone when we released touch creation mode, bringing the experience of making and sharing your own creations to mobile devices with touch screens. As we’ve added more social features, we’ve also seen explosive growth amongst mobile users. To deliver an even better experience for the growing community, Hiber is working on delivering Apps for Android, iOS devices in 2021. At the root of it all, we believe we are giving people a new language with which to communicate using interactive 3D elements, without the need to code, so anyone can tell their story or deliver their message to the world. -
25
Vulcan Forged
Vulcan Forged
Play, build, collaborate, earn, and bring your ideas to life with the fastest growing blockchain game and dApp platform. Designed as an easy-to-play and easy-to-build ecosystem, Vulcan Forged is a community-based project that promotes the development of world-class blockchain games by supporting developers through its development programs, incubation and crowdfunding. For blockchain game enthusiasts, Vulcan Forged is a one-stop-shop where they can access popular games and a huge NFT marketplace to buy and sell digital assets in-game. The entire ecosystem is powered by its own PYR settlement, staking and utility token. The ERC20 compatible PYR is a cross-platform currency that can be used in game titles that are part of the Vulcan Forged ecosystem. We are committed to providing the best NFT Gaming experiences possible by offering engaging and entertaining games as we do our part in revolutionizing the blockchain gaming space. -
26
Forte
Forte
Economic technology for video games. An end-to-end solution for token-based game economies and NFTs that benefits the community. Creating new economic and creative opportunities for billions of people around the world takes more than just technology. We’re building a complete set of technologies, tools, and services that erase any barriers to entry to blockchain technology, for developers, players, and fans. Our grant fund for game creators is designed to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology, and more quickly bring its benefits to the masses. We take an active role in the community to help others better understand blockchain and NFT technology, their use in games, and the positive impact they bring. Our full-stack solution is architected from the ground up to be easy to use, fully compliant, and interoperable with any blockchain. We provide the easiest way to start building a sustainable and resilient value foundation for your game, players, and community. -
27
CRYENGINE
CRYENGINE
The most powerful game development platform for you and your team to create world-class entertainment experiences. What you see is what you get: Sandbox allows you to create seamless worlds without any baking. Create your world and export to a game as you see it in the Editor. Fully realtime dynamic global illumination with a fully PBR workflow allows you to create ultra realistic environments using the tools you're used to. Physical simulations that take into account real world physical properties in a realistic manner to provide easily configurable and dynamic scenes. Use CRYENGINE's exclusive Audio Translation Layer that allows you to choose the middleware you want, when you want. Allowing for workflows that work for you. -
28
Ziva Face Trainer
Ziva Dynamics
Realtime faces, trained in the cloud. Sign up for exclusive early access today. Bring your custom faces to life with the ZRT Face Trainer. This experimental technology trains any face mesh to perform the most complex expressions in real-time. The ZRT Face Trainer is built on a comprehensive library of 4D data and proprietary machine learning algorithms. Within 1 hour, your character mesh is injected with the game industry's best tech. The ZRT Face Trainer is built on a library containing over 15TB of 4D scan data. ZRT face puppets can express over 72,000 training shapes, as well as novel face poses. ZRT face puppets are only 30MB at runtime and run at real-time frame rates (3ms/frame on a single CPU thread). Currently, all ZRT Face Trainer inputs must be 'registered' to effectively complete the Training process. The quality of the registration will directly influence your ZRT Face Training quality. -
29
NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima
NVIDIA
Omniverse™ Machinima beta is a reference application that enables users to collaborate in real-time to animate and manipulate characters along with their environments inside virtual worlds. For technical artists, content creators, and industry professionals who want to utilize high-fidelity renders from inside of these virtual worlds, Omniverse Machinima gives you the tools to easily make game cinematics. Experience stunning realism at your fingertips, faster than ever. With the NVIDIA MDL material library, every surface, material, and texture is as real as it gets, and the multi-GPU enabled Omniverse RTX Renderer allows you to easily toggle between real-time ray-traced and referenced path-traced mode for scenes that are true-to-reality. Go from audio to animation in no time at all. Simply record your manifesto or sample your favorite movie lines and watch your character’s face and body come alive with Audio2Face and Audio2Gesture technology. -
30
Kinetix
Kinetix
Integrate emotes to drive engagement and boost revenues for your game or virtual world. Players use emotes to socialize and express themselves in 3D gaming content. Animations that express emotion have been used in MMO games for more than two decades, but user demand for emotes has skyrocketed after their viral success in Fortnite Battle Royale. A recent report from the non-profit research organization Blockchain Research Lab found that 74% of players of games and virtual worlds such as PUBG and Roblox use emotes in games, while 22% do so every time they play. Through a plug-and-play approach which allows developers to activate the features they need, developers can select which emotes they want to offer players, integrate the fully customizable Kinetix emote wheel, hotkeys, and contextual emotes, and even enable gamers to create their own in-game emotes via a web app which uses the Kinetix Studio’s generative AI technology to convert videos to 3D animations.