One tool I'd like to add to the list is Arttista.

The reason it's my favorite isn't simply because I enjoy using it. It's because I created it.

Years ago, when I started developing my own games, I couldn't find a drawing and animation tool that worked the way I felt a game development workflow should. Every tool I tried forced me to adapt my workflow to the software, instead of the software adapting to the creative process I had in mind.

So I decided to build my own.

Arttista is the result of that journey. It combines illustration, frame-by-frame animation, bones/IK, and sprite sheet export in a workflow designed specifically for game artists and indie developers.

Today it's used by illustrators and animators from many countries, and seeing people create amazing work with something that started as my own solution has been incredibly rewarding.

Website: https://www.arttista.com.br

There's also a YouTube channel with 140+ tutorials covering character creation, animation, sprite sheet export, and many other features:

https://www.youtube.com/@arttistachannel

Here is Itch.io page https://arttista.itch.io/arttista

Adding one I built myself. I write music for games, and the part I always dreaded was getting a track to actually loop cleanly in the various game engines. The app I made is called Loopsmith, and it works on Windows. You set the loop on the waveform, hear the seam repeat to confirm it loops properly, and then export marked WAVs or OGG. It also includes ready to paste snippets for Unity, Godot, and the web. And it can build the setup inside FMOD or Wwise for you. I think this should help get nice loops much faster.

There is a Demo version available to see how it works that comes with 5 exports.

Itch.io page: https://austinhaynes.itch.io/loopsmith

Hey I might be a little biased as the developer, but my favorite tool is Fuzzy Brain! It's a Unity asset that gives you a different way to build game logic. It separates decision-making logic from behavior implementation, which keeps your code cleaner and more focused while making behaviors easier to create, modify, reuse, and maintain.

It's based on Valve's bark system, but expanded to be used for many different things, not just speech. I completely optimized it for unity and fully integrated it into the editor!

It's my favorite tool, because it promotes separation of concerns, keeping decision-making logic separated from behavior implementation. This helps keep code clean so your gameplay code doesn't become filled with decision-making and branching. It Reduces complex if/else logic making code easier to maintain and modify.

Fuzzy Brain shifts your control logic to data-driven design so behavior can be assembled from data rather than hard-coded control flow. this allows non programmers to author behaviours without needing the assistance of a programmer, which means less back and forth and faster iteration.

The system is really simple, There are 3 key parts, Conditions, Acts and Actors, Acts have a list of Conditions that are evaluated by the Actor to select the Act to run. The whole ting can be represented as a simple spreadsheet, no messy behaviour trees or complex state machines, no weights to balance. Can be used for simple or complex behaviours and great for making reactive or emergent gameplay.

For more information check out the webpage:
https://fuzzybrain.page.gd/

Fuzzy Brain is available on the unity asset store:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/behavior-ai/fuzzy-brain-349538