Best Mobile Game Development Tools
Due to the ever-expanding demand for mobile gaming, more mobile game companies are emerging, publishing games and creating new titles. The high demand in this industry has resulted in the advancement of high-quality tools enabling mobile game developers and companies to deliver high-quality games.
Here are some of the best mobile game development tools:
Unity 3D
Unity is well known as one the top, (if not the top) game development platform available and even supports a free personal use version. From its animation tech mecanim and large suite of tools, you would be hard pushed to find any smartphone that doesn't contain a Unity developed title. Unity is also expanding its offers, with the addition of Tsugi providing a cloud-based development service. Currently, Unity 5 supports both iOS and Android.
Epic’s Unreal Engine allows a full C++ engine and editor source code. For mobile development, a range of ready-made assets and tutorials are available. Mobile features incorporate dynamic shadows, and powerful point lights. It also supports the cloud, in-app purchases (IAPs) and push notifications for iOS. Its latest engine allows the developer to create less graphic intensive applications as well.
MonoGame engine is built on a single framework. It’s available for Android, iOS, Windows and other platforms. It can be used for free on several offered platforms.
Marmalade
Available for iOS and Android, it is accessible for cross-platform native games and apps in C/C++ and can be deployed to both mobile and desktop. Juice is another feature game developers can use to deploy native iOS games to Android without rewriting the code.
Corona SDK supports Android, iOS, Kindle, and Nook. Corona SDK is completely free, and commonly used for developing 2D games, and offers a broad range of tools such as basic shapes, containers, anchor points, and groups. Game developers can create their splash screens and publish into different platforms. Though developers are only allowed a limited amount of plugins, such as ad monetization. IAPs are not supported by this tool.
Project Anarchy is a free end-to-end game engine made specifically for mobile gaming. This tool features Havok’s Vision Engine, game development tools such as Animation Studio, Physics, and AI. Other features also include LUA scripting and debugging, and a full set of tutorials and sample materials to help in your mobile game development process.
Of course, this is not an extensive list by far. An analysis of the top performing publishers and top-performing title in both Android and iOS stores show that type of game development tools that are used to bring success to the best mobile gaming experience available today. If you're just starting out look at what you want to achieve, and dissect how the pro’s are doing it. You could also opt to hiring an outsourced game development company like Alley Labs to help you start to finish with your game design, game testing and development ensuring that your product will be the best it can be. Alley Labs primarily develops with Unity3D and have had great success doing so.
