Game design resources

Here’s a collection of online tools I’ve used over the years. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list, but I hope new and experienced designers can find useful tools to help their designs at all stages. Feel free to send me suggestions!

Unless noted with ($), all of these are free to access and use or have a reasonable free membership.

You’ll notice there are no Large Language Models (LLMs) or generative models like ChatGPT in this list. I don’t use them for a variety of reasons, but above all I see them as plagiarism software designed to exploit artists and writers.

Updated November 3rd, 2025

Art

Inkscape - Free vector graphics editor.

Flaticon - great vector icons - Massive library of vector-style art covering just about every topic. This is where 99% of my prototype artwork and icons comes from.

Open Peeps, Hand-Drawn Illustration Library - Customizable characters with great representation.

Smithsonian Open Access - Free collection of images and 3D models from the Smithsonian.

Card layout

Countersheets - An Inkscape extension that works with .csv files to populate cards and tiles with any layout. MASSIVE time-saver!

($) Dextrous - Online prototyping tool. Especially useful for card layouts.

Colors

Accessible color palette generator | Adobe Color

Create a palette - Coolors - A great tool for defining your game’s look from the start. Adds a sense of polish and vision to prototypes.

CMYK to HEX | Html Colors

Creative tools

Deck of Lenses - Jesse Schell’s tool for coinciding elements of your game from a variety of perspectives.

Map-making and worldbuilding

Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator v1.106.7

($) World Map Hex Tiles Pack - png pack of hexes with a variety of biomes and points of interest.

Math

Wolfram Alpha - Versatile tool for working through math problems. Great for probability and combinatorics, as well as other math things I’m not smart enough for.

Minimum Number of Coins - Essential tool for determining how many coins you need of different denominations for your game.

Desmos | Graphing Calculator

Playtesting software

($) Screentop.gg - Digital prototyping and playtesting tool with a great free plan and excellent value paid plans. 

Podcasts, videos, and blogs

Ludology (podcast) - This podcast was my education in game design and getting published. The hosts have changed but the focus and dedication to studying what makes games tick has never wavered.  

ShippBoard Games (blog) - Sarah Shipp’s excellent game design blog.

GameTek (newsletter)- Geoff Engelstein’s regular newsletter on the math and science of games.

Cardboard Philosophy (podcast) - Short, pithy discussions of games and game design through random prompts each episode.

Hollandspiele (YouTube) - Home to Amabel Holland’s brilliant video essays on board games.

Pam Walls Game Design (YouTube) - Pam Walls’ vlog with game design and publishing advice.

Matthew Dunstan (YouTube) - Matthew’s game design and publishing advice vlog.

Game Maker’s Toolkit (YouTube) - Mark Brown’s deep dive into video games and their mechanisms and narrative devices. 

Prototype components

($) Spielematerial - Excellent source of affordable prototype components. Ships from Germany but remains one of the most affordable places to find wooden tokens shipping to the US.

Publishing tips, contests, and directories

Cardboard Edison - I’m going to break this one down into a few parts:

The Cardboard Edison Award - Major tabletop game design award that has led to many published games.

Playtest group directory - Includes both in-person and online groups in the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. 

($) The Compendium - Publisher directory, with much of the info coming from publishers themselves.

TTGDA’s North American convention directory

TTGDA’s contract guide

Shapes

($) Gear Generator 2 beta - Tool for creating different types of gears.

Hall of Hexagons - Lots of resources and musings on the flagship shape of boardgames.

Spreadsheets

How to Create Pivot Table from Multiple Google Sheets - Sheets for Marketers

SvgPathEditor

Words

OneLook Dictionary Search - Versatile dictionary that allows you to search in unusual ways, like finding a list of words that contain a certain string of letters.

relatedwords.io - Related word generator that goes well beyond most thesauruses.

Character Frequency Counter - Count Letter Occurrences - Online - Browserling Web Developer Tools

Letter distributions and word games, part 2: Scrabble Dice Redux | Game Curmudgeon | BoardGameGeek