Tools for Anyone

First off, every tool listed below is available for free. Secondly, as a linux dev myself, I understand how annoying it is to look at a "tools for game development" page and see nothing but windows only tools. And while there's always wine, having native options is always a plus. As such, every tool on this page runs on both windows and linux. You may notice that there is no listing for IDEs, this is because an IDE is purely user preferance. There are many who still edit in terminal or with the default text editor, for example. However if you're looking for a one size fits all IDE, just use VSCode.

Even though the engines listed here are among the biggest and most obvious, I still felt this section worthwhile to include.

• Unity - My personal engine of choice. The thousands of hours of tutorials and the countless github projects make it, as a teaching assistant for a game development class, the easiest to get into. Combining that with its support for 2D and 3D, and it's a tough engine to beat.
• Godot - Another combination 2D and 3D engine, and the only engine I'd consider over Unity. With a wave of unity creators switching to Godot in response to Unity's policy changes, the engine being open-source, and the fact Godot supports C# on top of its own language, I think the swap to Godot is as seamless as hopping engines can get. As for beginners, Unity still feels like the best choice, purely because it's hard to beat a decades worth of tutorials.
• GameMaker - A purely 2D engine, GameMaker is the only engine that I think gives Unity a run for its money in the 2D department. It's simplicity combined with a tutorial count rivaling Unity's make it a fantastic engine if you only ever intend to work in 2D.

I often find music and sound effects get passed over in lists like these, or when they are listed it's always for a price

• SFXR - Though on the surface is seems to be tailored only to retro games, its level of customization makes it more than usable for projects of any kind. DrPetter, who made SFXT, also has a number of other free tools I've used, such as musagi and fftuner for making music easily and, most importantly, for free. However, other than SFXR, none of his tools run natively on Linux and thus are not listed. However, given the shortage of free music tools, their honorable mention seemed important.
• Reaper - Reaper is free in the same way Winrar is free, but when you realize how hard it is to find a good music tool available for free in any capacity, Reaper more than earns its place on the list. While Reaper doesn't come with its own instruments, there are dozens of free MIDI plugins available for download.

I often find music and sound effects get passed over in lists like these, or when they are listed it's always for a price

• Krita - For 2D, Krita takes the crown from Gimp simply for being first and foremost an art tool, while gimp is better for image editing. Its allroundedness, built in animation tool, support for drawing tablets, and its "built for artists, by artists" nature make it the perfect 2D art software for general needs.
• Blender - For 3D, it's truly hard to beat the king. With support for blender models being baked into Unity directly and Blenders equally endless tutorial count, it's just the best option on the market. However, to comment on tutorials, I personally found the infamous donut tutorial to be tedious and unhelpful for my needs, and would highly recommend Grant Abbitt's tutorials instead.