Top 9 Game Asset Sites - Free 2D & 3D Game Assets

Game assets is a broad term used to describe every individual element that you’ll find in a game. These can include artwork, 3D models, the GUI (interface), animation, special effects, music, voiceovers, and even scripting for things like physics. There are millions of free and paid assets available for your game project. Pre-made game resources are great for indie devs who specialize in coding over the actual visual design. They’re also an excellent way to keep your project on budget, and on time. We recommend you consider using a complete asset pack to develop your game if possible. Asset packs often include everything you need to create a game world. They’re a fantastic way to keep your game art looking consistent. If you’re interested in learning more about creating your own sellable assets, check out this article. Asset packs tend to cost between $10 and $100 depending on the quality and quantity of the product.

Get the ultimate cheat codes to game dev with Rokoko Studio’s motion library

We're a bit biased on this one, but the feedback we received since we launched the Motion Library has been very positive so we want to make sure you know about it as it tends to fly under the radar. Rokoko Studio includes the world’s largest collection of AAA motion capture animations, which you can find under the ML tab inside Rokoko Studio (Motion Library logo), but also natively in Maya as a plugin. All mocap data is cleaned and captured by a variety of professional 3D artists, that are part of the world's biggest and most respected mocap studios. You can find great game movements for actions like jump, walk, run, die, and more. Assets are spread over a variety of body-types to match the height and girth of your characters. 

Retargeting mocap animation to your rig is super easy — just export the data as an .fbx and use Rokoko’s retargeting plugin. On sign up, you get 100 free mocap assets. After that, each animation costs between $1 and $20 depending on it's complexity. Download Rokoko Studio for free to access the Motion Library

Craftpix.net: Create a cohesive game from start to finish

Craftpix has tons of free character sprites, backgrounds, icons, tilesets, and even GUI (Graphical User Interface) elements. But perhaps most useful to a game designer just starting out, you can also get “Game Kits” which include all you’ll need to create an entire game from start to finish. For example, a game kit could look something like: 

• 6 main characters 
• 30 unique opponents 
• 3 boss characters 
• 5 thematic tilesets (forest, mountain, dungeon, castle, castle dungeon) 
• A set of traps with animation 
• 2 sets of magic effects. 20 animations;
• 40 food icons
• 40 potion icons 
• Treasure icons 40 pieces
• Ingredient icons 40 pieces 
• Avatars of the main characters and opponents 42 pieces 
• Interface (windows, buttons and other elements)
• Icons for Google Play and App Store.
  

Game Kits can be as cheap as $10 once-off, or you can sign up for a monthly subscription to all 1000+ assets for $15 ($3 per month if paid annually). Craftpix’s 2D Game Kits

Kenny’s 40,000+ game resources are free for commercial use

Despite the non-existent price tag, these assets are pretty high quality. There are 2D assets, 3D assets, UI assets, and even a few simple audio assets. Kenny’s assets all have a similar look about them despite being so diverse in genre. Here’s some other things Kenny’s been up to:

• Actual indie games created using the assets.
• Useful mini-programs like Creature Mixer and Asset Forge that make developing your own assets and characters ridiculously easy. 
• A value-packed Patreon that comes with extra resources. 
  

All of the assets come with a commercial-use licence and are totally free to use. Kenny’s 40,000 assets

Find all sorts of assets on ArtStation

Artstation has a popular marketplace full of nearly 60,000 assets. There are a ton of high-quality free game assets in all kinds of styles. Not just limited to meshes and artwork, the assets also include custom-built textures and elements like clothing and hair. Paid assets range in quality all the way up to expertly crafted rigged characters. These assets are varied and on average cost between $250 and $500. ArtStation has other resources like brushes, tutorials, and a jobs board. Browse ArtStation’s extensive library

Unity games: Find every kind of asset in the Unity asset store

Unity is one of the world’s most popular game engines. So it makes sense that their store is packed full of high-quality resources from every game genre imaginable. All-in-all, 3D is Unity’s bread and butter with 41k assets available. You’ll find plenty of low poly meshes as well as a few pre-made animations. Some of the animations contain mocap data, and others are pre-set keyframe animation. Both types of animation need to be retargeted to a compatible rig.  Pricing ranges from cheap $10 assets, all the way up to big $300 bundles. 

The Unity store also has a few 2D assets that are well worth a look. The art styles tend to be more diverse than in other marketplaces and the assets are of higher quality (and price). Go to Unity’s Asset Store

Go full-on in Unreal Engine’s 3D asset marketplace

Everything in this marketplace is unsurprisingly compatible with Unreal Engine’s game engine. You can find a huge variety of assets including Megascans, environments, architectural visualization and code plugins. They also have industry specific assets for: 

• Fashion
• Automotive and transportation 
• Architecture
• Film and live events
• Training and simulation
  

There’s a vast number of high quality free character assets and 5 featured “Free for the Month” assets. Go to Unreal Engine’s Marketplace

Turbosquid: The industry standard

Turbosquid is one of the largest online asset stores  in the world (they’ve amassed more than 1 million assets in total). They cater to 3DS Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Unity, and Unreal Engine softwares. Category-wise, Turbosquid is most well known for: 

• Cars
• Characters
• Animals
• Vehicles
• Architecture
• Furniture
• Anatomy 
• Landscapes
• Technology
  

Just remember, not all assets here are made for 3D games. Some can have a ultra-high poly count, making them unusable. Check out Turbosquid’s 54k low poly models

Indie Developers love Game Dev Market

Game Dev Market is built by indie game developers, for indie developers. It’s got plenty of assets to make your game dev faster and cheaper and is the perfect place to go if you’re participating in game jams. On this marketplace you can find content packs with 2D, 3D, audio, sound effects, and GUI assets. Naturally there are plenty of free and paid options. Check out Game Dev Market

Itch.io: Find game assets for retro 2d games

Itch.io is a super popular asset site with over 28,000 game assets. They’ve got quite a good variety of free assets and have some great $2-$15 assets. There’s something for everyone, top downs views, entire game maps, anime-styled characters, cool graphic design styles and plenty of pixel art. Itch.io’s Game Assets