Make your first game.
Free. Starting this weekend.

Pick an engine

The engine is the app you build the game in. Both of these are free. Start with Godot: it is a small download, it runs on an ordinary laptop, and you own everything you make with it.

Godot EngineFree and open source under the MIT license: use it for anything, including games you sell. 2D and 3D.

START HERE

Unity PersonalUnity's free version, for individuals and small organizations (check the eligibility on Unity's page). A good second engine once you have finished one game.

FREE VERSION

Learn it free

Do one of these start to finish before you watch anything else. Finishing one small game teaches more than starting ten.

Godot: Your first 2D gameThe official step-by-step tutorial. You build a complete small game where you dodge enemies, from an empty project.

DO THIS FIRST

CS50's Introduction to 2D Game DevelopmentHarvard's course, free to take through OpenCourseWare. You rebuild classics like Pong, Flappy Bird and Breakout, in Lua with the LÖVE framework.

FREE COURSE

Unity LearnUnity's own free tutorials and learning paths, if you pick Unity.

FREE

Free art and sound

You don't need to draw. Use free art first, finish the game, and make your own art later.

Kenney game assetsThousands of sprites, tiles, UI and sounds. Every asset on the asset pages is public domain (CC0), so you can use them even in a game you sell.

CC0

itch.io free game assetsFree packs made by other developers. Each one has its own license, so read it before you use it.

CHECK LICENSE

Build it with AI

Stuck on a bug, or don't understand a line of code? Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT once, then keep asking. It teaches you instead of just writing the game for you.

I am a complete beginner making my first game in Godot (GDScript). Be my patient game dev tutor.

My game idea in one line: [describe it]

Rules:
1. Help me build the smallest playable version first...

(tap Copy for the full text)

Publish it, get players

A game nobody plays is a project. A game with a link is a portfolio. Put it online the same weekend you finish it.

itch.io: upload your gameMake a free account, upload the exported game, and you get a page with a link anyone can play or download from.

FREE

Join a game jamOnline jams with a theme and a deadline, open to anyone. The fastest way to finish a game and get people to play it.

DEADLINE

Want players today? Post your itch.io link in the RahmanBuilds Discord. Builders play and test each other's work there.

The girl who built the school

Sadia Bashir is from Faisalabad and grew up in Islamabad. She stitched clothes and gave tuitions to pay for her education, studied computer science at COMSATS Islamabad (a bachelor's, then a master's, on scholarship), and became the first girl in her family to graduate.

In 2016 she co-founded PixelArt Games Academy in Islamabad. Facebook and The Game Awards named her a Global Gaming Citizen and called it Pakistan's first game development school. Forbes put her on its 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2018. Today she is a product manager on mobile games like 2248, which has 50M+ downloads on Google Play.

Sources: her interview with IGN Pakistan (2016), her Forbes profile, Facebook Gaming (2019), 2248 on Google Play (downloads read 9 Oct 2026).