Beyond any doubt gaming industry one of the biggest mobile app industry in the world, employing thousands of people. The global revenue generated by it is estimated to be over $100 billion annually in 2017 and expected to rise to over $128.5 billion by 2020 with mobile games sharing over 50% percent of it. A mobile game development company needs to harness innovative technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality to further increase the percentage share towards the mobile industry.

With the drastic evolution of mobile technologies in the past few years creating a game prototype or even a full-fledged game has become easier than ever with the game making tools.  These tools mostly depend on the drag and drop frameworks with no need to write even a single line of code. This helps the game app developers in the building and releasing your game very fast. However, though you have permissions for editing and manipulating the code, your control over the game is still limited. This may provide quick and simple game development solutions to amateurs and newbies but does not fulfill the needs of corporates and large projects. Also, limitations like limited storage, battery issues, heating issues, processing limits, etc. loom over the mobile app market.

A large number of innovative mobile game development tools are available on the market to solve the above issues and make made mobile game development worthy of investment. However, no single magic tool can solve all problems of developers. Different functions are performed by different mobile game development tools, and they cater to the needs of a different audience. Here is a compilation of useful tools that a mobile game development company must use for streamlining the game development process based on your needs and optimizing the results.

Corona SDK

Developer: Corona Labs Inc.
Uses: 2D game development kit that has over 1000 built-in APIs, the large number of plugins, and Corona Native Extensions, for multiple functions ranging from animations to networking. Provides real-time testing that helps you ideate, code, and validate easily.
Platforms: Cross-platform for iOS, Android, and Windows phones as well as Apple TV and Android TV
Scripting language: Lua (developers prefer it because of the short learning curve)
Advantages: Easy to learn and extremely powerful framework for 2D games
Limitations: Only used for 2D game development, has limited or no capabilities in 3D gaming, AR, or VR.
Price: Basic version is free, enterprise solution costs $79/month, higher cost version is $199/month

GameMaker Studio

Developer: YoYo Games
Uses: Helps you build games using the drag and drop interface.
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Tizen
Scripting language: Own language similar to C
Advantages: Easy to learn
Limitations: Only good for 2D games, highly inconvenient for creating 3D games
Price: Free trial, paid plans start at $99.99, mobile plan starts at $399.99

Construct2

Developer: Scirra Ltd.
Uses: Creating HTML5 games
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry
Advantages: No coding or game development knowledge needed, customizable features, instant preview and testing, powerful event system that makes your game more visual and human readable
Price: Free, paid plans start at £79.99

Fusion

Developer: Clickteam
Uses: Quickly creating 2D games with the help of widely available extension objects
Platforms: iOS and Android
Advantages: a Visual editor that helps you place and position all the elements of your game app like counters, characters, strings of text, etc. using the mouse, clicking on checkboxes, or selecting from a drop down menus.
Price: Free, paid plan starting at 79,00 €.

Game engines

Game engines aid in the proper development of the game and provide full control over it. They also save a lot of time by providing pre-set modules, libraries, effects, and tools that can be customized according to the need by experienced and advanced developers.

Unreal Engine

Developer: Epic Games
Uses:3D game development
Platforms: iOS and Android mobile, PC, Mac, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 console
Scripting language: C++
Advantages: Versatile with stunning graphics capabilities like advanced dynamic lighting, can leverage AR and VR
Limitations: Size of the games is relatively large, and high-end devices are needed to run the games
Price: Free (5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product/ quarter)

Unity

Developer: Unity Technologies
Uses: Both 2D and 3D game development
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Tizen, Blackberry
Advantages: Best engine for cross-platform mobile game development, instant play mode for rapid editing and iteration, and a powerful animation system
Limitations: Limited editing capabilities
Price: Free for personal use, paid plans start at $35/ month.

Marmalade SDK

Developer: Marmalade Technologies Limited
Uses: Helps your code once and it is compiled and executed on all supported platforms
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Tizen, Blackberry
Advantages: Can launch your game in different stores and multiple devices in a short time, allows utilization of library files, samples, documentation, and tools needed to develop, test, and deploy mobile games
Price: $600 per license

Cocos2d-x

Developer: MIT License
Uses: 2D game development
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Tizen, Linux, OS X, Blackberry
Advantages: Resource efficient as it helps create games of a size as low as 1.5 MB yet high speed, great framework for creating cross-platform GUI-based interactive games, capable of running on all kinds of devices
Limitations: Limited capabilities in 3D game development
Price: Free

Amazon Lumberyard

Developer: Amazon
Uses:3D game development
Platforms: iOS, Android, PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4
Scripting language: C++
Advantages: Networking, accelerated graphics, Audiokinetic’s feature-rich sound engine, seamless integration with AWS Cloud and Twitch API
Price: Free (cost may be associated with the usage of AWS Cloud for online multiplayer games that quickens its development and deployment.

ShiVa Engine

Developer: ShiVa Technologies SAS
Uses: 3D game and app development
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry
Advantages: easy to use, allows you to export your games to over 20 different platforms
Price: Free, paid plans start at $200

Conclusion

A mobile game development company requires high-level technical knowledge for kicking off a game from scratch. With a vivid experience of working with both 2D and 3D game development tools, you can save a lot of resources which can be used for game marketing and further improvements.