Game Industry Tools

Dive into the essential software and systems used daily by game dev professionals. Organized by department. So you never miss the tool that fits your role.

 

🔧 Production / Project Management

Focus: Keep development on track, aligned and sane.

  • JIRA - The gold standard for Scrum/Kanban task management in studios.

  • Confluence / Notion - Documentation and planning sites that devs actually use.

  • Trello / ClickUp / Asana - Lightweight task boards that scale from game jams to full pipelines.

  • Miro / FigJam - Digital whiteboards for flowcharts, brainstorms and backlog planning.

  • Excel / Google Sheets - Old but efficient for burn charts, budgets and milestone planning.

🎮 Design

Focus: Prototype, system-math, UI flows and design docs.

  • Unity / Unreal Engine / Godot - Game engines that double as rapid prototyping tools and logic testers.

  • Miro / Figma / Confluence / Notion - For flowcharts, UX wireframes and documentation.

  • Excel / Google Sheets - For balancing, economy cures and XP scales.

  • Twine / Ink - Narrative and dialogue prototyping tools.

  • Eagle App - Asset reference and inspiration management.

🎨 Art

Focus: From 2D sketches to game ready 3D models and visual consistency.

  • Photoshop / Krita / Procreate - 2D concept work and texture painting.

  • Blender / Maya / 3DS Max - 3D modeling, rigging, animation.

  • Zbrush - Scult high-poly assets.

  • Substance Painter/Designer / Quixel / SpeedTree / Simplygon - PBR texturing, vegetation and optimized middleware.

  • MagicaVoxel / Marmoset Toolbag - Voxel art and PBR renders for portfolio ready art.

  • PureRef / Miro - Moodboards and visual consistency boards.

🔉 Audio

Focus: Sound design, implementation and adaptive score.

  • Audacity - Free audio editing software, staple for entry level SFX.

  • Reaper / Pro Tools / Logic - Pro-level audio editing, mixing and mastering.

  • Wwise / FMOD - Industry middleware for dynamic, context-aware audio.

  • Unreal / Unity Audio - Engine side audio events and triggers.

💻 Programming / Technical

Focus: Cored code, systems, tools and pipelines.

  • Visual Studio / Rider - robust C#/C++ development with built-in debuggers.

  • Git / Perforce - Version control for programmers and large teams.

  • RenderDoc / Pix / Unreal Profiler - Profiler tools to track performance, memory and frame rates.

  • Blueprints / Bolt / NodeGraph - Visual scripting for rapid prototyping.

  • CMake - Build scripts, compile-time and packaging management.

🧪 Quality Assurance (QA)

Focus: Testing, tracking and ensuring game polish.

  • Jira / Hansoft / DevTrack - Bug tracking and triage systems.

  • TestRail - Creating detailed test plans and execution reports.

  • Unity Profiler / Unreal Engine Logs - Automated and runtime bug detection.

  • Console Devkits - For console certification testing and hardware compliance.

  • Jenkins / Selenium - (For automation QA roles).

📈 Live Ops & Backend

Focus: Multiplayer systems, analytics, player data and engagement.

  • PlayFab / Photon - Cloud services for player data, matchmaking and live backend.

  • Gridly - Localization tool with AI-enhancements for tagging, syncing and translating content.

 

📜 TLDR

  • Production: JIRA, Confluence, Trello, Miro, Excel

  • Design: Engine, Confluence, Excel

  • Art: Photoshop, 3D software, Substance Painter, Quixel

  • Audio: Audacity, Reaper, FMOD, Wwise

  • Programming: VS/Rider, Git/Perforce, Blueprint, Profiler tools

  • QA: JIRA, TestRail, Console Dev Kits, Build automation tools

  • Live Ops: PlayaFab, Photon, Gridly
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