Awesome Learn Gamedev

A Mega-List of Learning Resources for Game Creators

About
Key
General
Programming
- Gameplay
- Graphics
- Networking
- Fun
Technical Art
- Shaders
- Rigging
- VFX
Art
Design
Audio
Writing
Production
Marketing and Business
Job Hunting and Career
Other

An illustration of a cream-and-orange calico cat that Hazel uses as her profile icon :3

💜 Curated by <ins>Hazel Kennedy</ins> 💜

Got resources? Notice a broken link? Email me, shoot me a DM, or make a pull request! I like chatting too - don't be shy! ^^

About

This list is aimed at learning the craft of game development. It has been curated to offer general knowledge, resources, and hiring advice for the variety of disciplines and roles under the gamedev umbrella.

Nearly all resources are free, and anything with a price tag will be clearly marked. Paid resources are only included if they have been personally endorsed by an industry professional working in the relevant discipline.

Suggestions and future-proofing efforts are always welcome! See Contributing.md for contribution guidelines, and check out open issues for tasks that need completing, such as archival work.

Generally, this lists avoids tools and assets. However, it contains courses/tutorials for specific tools wherever they are required for a role, and assets whenever they would enable a person to learn their role more effectively (for example, the animation section contains rigs). For tools, assets, communities, and more granular lists for individual tools like Unity, check out the gaming category of awesome

This list avoids including tutorials (within reason). It aims to help you develop your problem-solving skills and improve your general knowledge, rather than show you how to solve a particular problem. It also avoids design analysis videos, as they tend to be aimed at passive entertainment more than active learning. Both of these are easy to find and difficult to categorize. For curation purposes, this list errs on the side of exclusion.

These resources made my career possible. I hope they are just as helpful for you!

Disclaimer: I'm a technical artist and gameplay programmer, so most resources are geared towards tech and art. However, most disciplines are represented here in some fashion, particularly through general materials and other curated lists.

Key

💠 Starred Resources are "best for beginner" links. These include courses, classes, books, and lists aimed at people who are new to the games industry, or game development as a whole.

🟪 Purple Resources are “most useful” links. These include highly influential courses/books, resources I've personally found invaluable, and other entire mega-lists.

General

New to game development? Start here 💠🟪

"The Door Problem" 💠🟪 - A one-sentence summary of most major roles in a large studio, and a bigger explanation of a game designer's job

My mega-playlist of great gamedev videos 🟪 - Conference talks, tutorials, analyses, etc

GameDev Contacts 🟪 - A huge list of professional game developers you can contact for advice! Be courteous - these are real people! Curated by Joe Hobbs - @JLHGameArt on Twitter.

MIT Open Courseware 💠🟪 - classes and materials from MIT (free to access)!

Game Design Stuff - Another mega-list of game development videos (primarily aimed at game design and programming)

FOSS GameDev - A list of Free and Open Source Software for every aspect of gamedev

VGDC at UCI Resources - A list of workshops and resources from the Video Game Development Club at the University of California, Irvine ()

More huge lists of resources, with many, many more incredible things! Some of these are older, so beware broken links and the like. 🟪

Programming

The Open Source University 🟪 - A complete study plan for a computer science education.

Coding Interview University 🟪 - Another complete study plan aimed at software engineers.

Professional Programming 🟪 - An expansive list of resources and other lists of resources intended to make you a more proficient programmer at a professional level.

How Game Engines Work 💠 - A blog and video explaining the game engine, or a tool/framework used to create games.

Complete Godot 4 Game Deveoper by GameDev.tv 💠🟪 - A fantastic way to learn Godot, a free and open source game engine. Gamedev.tv are an invaluable resource for learning game engines and tools, and I cannot recommend their courses enough. They are more than worth the $15.

Unreal Engine 5 C++ Developer 💠🟪 - Same as above, but with Unreal 5, a popular and powerful game engine. This course is invaluable - I know several full-time developers who learned from gamedev.tv, they are a gem. Wait for it to go on sale, then go pick this up.

Complete Unity Game Developer by GameDev.tv - Unity has been a long-standing champion in the industry, particularly in the mobile/AR/VR space. Despite this, I would be cautious recommending it over other options, in part because of technical details such as its closed source and slow development, and in part due to poor business practices on behalf of Unity Technologies, such as the now-revoked install-based pricing model and their involvement in defense contracting.

Intro to Computer Science and Programming in Python 💠 - An introductory python course taught at MIT (free to access!)

Programming in C++ as a Second Language 🟪 - Lecture notes, assignments, and materials from a course on C++ taught at the University of California, Irvine (free to access!)

Data Structure Implementation and Analysis 🟪 - Lecture notes, assignments, and materials from a course on data structures and algorithms taught at the University of California, Irvine (free to access!)

Game Programming Patterns 🟪 - A free book on programming patterns for games.

A Study Path for Game Programmers 🟪 - A huge collection of game programming book titles and covers organized by specialization, with fancy flow charts between each title for a recommended reading order! Note that the books are not included - a quick search should help you out with that ;]

How to Learn Software Design and Architecture 🟪 - A list of resources for software architecture.

Redblob - Interactive tutorials for math and algorithms.

Introduction to Algorithms - A book on algorithms. Pricey, look for it in a library or "something" (wink) first.

Awesome Math 🟪 - Another awesome list for mathematics, useful generally but often applicable to programming.

Math for Game Programmers - A free book on math for game programmers.

Mature Optimization - A free book on structuring code for performance, as well as testing large systems.

Data Oriented Design 🟪 - A free book on data-oriented design, an alternative to object-oriented programming

generatingfunctionology - A free book on generating functions.

C++ for C# Developers 💠 - An extensive tutorial series.

Game Engine Architecture 🟪 - A book on game engines. About $25 for the e-book, probably worth the investment if you plan to be an engine, tools, or graphics programmer.

Pro Git - A free book on everything git.

Design Patterns - A free book with very pretty illustrations.

Rethinking Design Patterns - An interesting criticism of the above book. I believe there is a response to this on the design patterns site.

Making a Game Engine - For the engine programmers and the insane: save yourself some trouble and watch this instead of making yet another game engine ^^

C# for Beginners - A free book on C#

Tool Dev 💠🟪 - An introduction to tool development (or creating tools to make game development more productive) and editor scripting in Unity by Freya Holmér.

Gamedev in Rust for Beginners - A collection of books, tutorials, articles, and a community to boot.

DemoFox - A blog with lots and lots of programming, graphics, and math tutorials and breakdowns.

Bit101 - A blog on mathy-programmer things with some tutorials and breakdowns.

Math for Game Devs - A primer on math geared towards game development by Freya Holmér.

Essence of Linear Algebra - A video series meant as a supplement for a class on Linear Algebra, made by 3Blue1Brown.

How to make Games for Gameboy - A comprehensive tutorial series on developing games for the Gameboy. Also includes links to other relevant tutorial series, such as one on C programming.

Understanding ECS - A blog post about Entity Component System design and implementation.

HandMadeHero - A very extensive catalogue of live-streamed coding tutorials.

VGDC at UCI Programming - A (slightly outdated) list of programming tutorials from the VGDC at UCI.

Optimization tips for Unity - Some tips from Unity about optimizing their games.

Gameplay

Study Reference Sheet for Gameplay Engineers 🟪 - Perfect for intermediate programmers looking to shore up their technical knowledge to prep for an interview. Note: this is currently being migrated. It is incomplete at time of writing, but I have also included the future-proof link.

Game AI Pro 🟪 - Three (3) free books (or more accurately, volumes of short papers) on game AI. Notable authors include Steve Rabin, a DigiPen professor who teaches AI for games.

AI Game Dev.com - An AI development community with lots of resources. It only exists on the internet archive, so be wary of outdated knowledge and broken links.

Graphics

The Awesome list for Computer Graphics 💠🟪 - Another awesome list specifically tailored to this topic, albeit not games-focused.

Graphics 💠🟪 - A Megalist of Graphics Programming and Tech Art resources.

How do I become a graphics programmer? 💠🟪 - An overview of graphics programming and a collection of resources tailored to beginners learning graphics programming.

WebGLFundamentals 💠🟪 - An