Music Composition Tools
Audacity Audacity is a free, open-source audio editor and recording tool that has been developed by a dedicated community since 1999
Synapse Audio The original creators of Orion, a piano roll synthesizer software that I use, but now they only release plug-ins and have discontinued the software.
Magix Software current publishers of my most-used DAW, ACID, as well as one for video called Vegas.
LMMS a free, cross-platform tool
Hydrogen Drum Machine Hydrogen is an open source project which is developed in an collective effort by a number of people around the globe.
FL Studio Originally fruity loops years ago. You can snag a trial here.
Orion This is a 2015 release article on my piano roll software of choice. It is now defunct, but I've used it ever since still.
Archived Orion 7.6.03 If you would like to try orion, here is an archived download of it.
Throwback Boomer Shooters
New Blood Games makers of Dusk, Ultrakill, Amid Evil, Gloomwood, etc.
Project Warlock II Demo on Retrovibe's itch.io page
Buckshot Software Website I designed this site and promise more content soon
Strafe on the Devolver Digital Games website
HROT a throwback shooter reminiscent of the original Quake
Ion Fury is a 3D Realms release similar to Duke Nukem 3D, but modern.
Other Retro-Style Classics
Cuphead takes visual inspiration from old Disney-style cartoons. Gameplay-wise, however, Cuphead is a classic run-and-gunner through and through
Stardew Valley Harkening back to classic farming/life simulators like Harvest Moon
Celeste A worthy Game of the Year contender in a year full of triple-A contenders
Sonic Mania I fucking love this. Its like the Sega Genesis' Sonic The Hedgehog trilogy, but it gets even better!
Undertale One of the biggest surprise indie hits of the last decade, Undertale took the gaming world by storm. The already iconic characters, hilarious and emotional dialogue, and instantly memorable music have made Undertale stick with every player who has given it a shot.
Bloodstained: Curse Of The Moon Because the Kickstarter campaign for their grander Bloodstained title was so successful, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon was created on the side, and in many ways, it was more well-received than the main game.
The Messenger Reminiscent of Ninja Gaiden on NES and has Super Nes elements
Enter the Gungeon randomly generated action game has a totally retro look that helps the brilliant simplicity of the gameplay
Shovel Knight side-scroller takes elements of Castlevania, Ghosts ‘N Goblins, and even DuckTales to create an immensely satisfying and well-designed game.
Owlboy feels straight out of a Pixar movie, with a little owl that goes on a big adventure with some friends to save his land from an evil threat. The classic tale of a black sheep who finds acceptance in his own way and winds up saving the day.
Dead Cells a retro-style game for anyone who wants that retro-level of difficulty on top of that retro art style and feel
Video Game Engineering Tools
GDevelop code-free easy game making software I found
GameMaker Game studio software by YoYogames... or find it on Steam
Clickteam Fusion is a software an old friend showed me years ago.
001 Game Creator I bought this for quite a bit years ago but ended up getting every pack during the christmas season when I was temporarily loaded one year.
GameGuru Classic is a cheap little software package I got off steam.
Graphics/Art Tools
Adobe Photoshop CS2 this was made free some years back.
Paint Shop Pro, Older Versions I use Paint Shop Pro 7 since 1999, still.
Paint Shop Pro 7 hosted ISO file on archive.org
Art Rage Pro 4 is a fun way to mess around with art using a computer for both artists and non-artists (me) alike.
15 Best Software Programs for Digital Artists
Artificial Intelligence/Art
Although I have mixed feelings about AI being used for art and music, which gets its ideas from image searches and other artists, I do recommend them for a good laugh!
Chat GPT the leading AI model
Gemini Google's inferior competitor to ChatGPT
Llama 3 AI open source from Meta
Claude 3 GPT-4 competitor by Anthropic
Perplexity Like ChatGPT but for research
Synthesia AI Text to Video in minutes
ElevenLabs AI Text to Speech and Voice Cloning
Grok Elon Musk's OpenAI Competitor
Mistral AI Nerds launching open source models
Copy AI Run & scale your go-to market
Midjourney Best AI Image Generator
Adobe Firefly First AI tool from Adobe
CoPilot AI companion from Microsoft
Runway Text-to-video in real time
Hugging Face The #1 AI Community
Gamma AI-Powered Powerpoint Alternative
Pika #1 AI Video Generator
Jasper AI Copilot for marketing
Techpresso #1 AI & Tech newsletter
Neural.love The first AI website I had found