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109 Best + Free Game Design Courses & Certificates [2026]
Ranked by Michael Kuhlman, CourseDuck's founder, from student reviews across every provider. How we rank
Our guide: The Best Game Development Courses on Udemy in 2026: Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, Roblox and Blender
Our top picks
- Unreal Engine 5: The Complete Beginner’s Course [Udemy]
- RPG Core Combat Creator: Learn Intermediate Unity C# Coding [Udemy]
- Unity Game Development Build 2D & 3D Games [Udemy]
- Complete C# Unity 3D Game Development in Unity 6 [Udemy] - Best Paid Course
- Welcome To Game Design - Introduction to Game Design Theory [Udemy]
- Master Unity By Building 6 Fully Featured Games From Scratch [Udemy]
- Adobe Illustrator: Mastering the Fundamentals [Udemy]
- Learn Professional 2D Game Graphic Design in Photoshop [Udemy]
- Learn Blender 3D Modeling for Unity Video Game Development [Udemy]
- Math For Video Games: The Fastest Way To Get Smarter At Math [Udemy]
About the best Game Design courses
CourseDuck compares the 109 Game Design courses listed here from 6 providers, 17 of them free, and ranks them from the 130,000 ratings and reviews their students have left, with the price, length and level of each one side by side. No course pays to be listed or ranked. As featured on Harvard EDU, Stackify and Inc. How we rank
Frequently asked questions
- Udemy and Eduonix are best for practical, low cost and high quality Game Design courses.
- Coursera, Udacity and EdX are the best providers for a Game Design certificate, as many come from top Ivy League Universities.
- YouTube is best for free Game Design crash courses.
- PluralSight, SkillShare and LinkedIn are the best monthly subscription platforms if you want to take multiple Game Design courses.
- Independent Providers for Game Design courses & certificates are generally hit or miss.
The gaming industry is a huge employer for graduates with a creative bent. ... Typically, game developers create almost everything from scratch, including the format, layout, and aesthetics of the games, including the characters and storylines, creating myriad opportunities for creative graduates.
- Average
- $57,006 a year
- Middle half earn
- $35,000 to $72,500 25th to 75th percentile
- Full range
- $18,500 to $123,000
Share of US job postings in each pay band; the dark bar holds the average, the striped bars the 25th and 75th percentiles. Source: ZipRecruiter salary data, gathered when this guide was first published in October 2026.
Yes and No. Certified Game Design developers on average make more money. Having a Game Design certificate greatly increases the chance of landing an interview and can open otherwise closed doors. Coursera, Udacity and EdX offer excellent certificate options for impressing your future employers. Eduonix, Udemy and several other providers offer certificates, but they aren't as reputable. If you have a Computer Science Degree, certificates are not as important. Still, many employers won't care about certificates, but rather your interview skills, experience and/or skills assessment.
109 Filtered Courses
1
Unreal Engine 5: The Complete Beginners Course (2025)
4.6
A 10.6 hour, no-code tour of the Unreal Engine 5 editor that explains why things work rather than just which buttons to click, refreshed in July 2025.
Best for: Absolute beginners who want the Unreal editor explained piece by piece before they start a project.
Pros
Cons
-
- Explains why editor systems work the way they do, not just which buttons to press
- Each section ends with tutorial videos that build a small working game
- Updated July 2025, so the UE5 version on screen is recent
- No coding needed: gameplay logic is scripted with Blueprints
-
- Long lecture-only stretches; low-star reviewers found the delivery dry
- No quizzes, assignments, or exercises outside the end-of-section tutorials
- Tutorials can feel like following steps rather than understanding them
2
RPG Core Combat Creator: Learn Intermediate Unity C# Coding (2025)
4.8
GameDev.tv's intermediate step up from the beginner bootcamps: 27.6 hours building RPG combat, enemy AI and a save system with proper code architecture.
Best for: Unity users who finished a beginner course and want to learn interfaces, delegates and clean architecture by building real RPG combat.
Pros
Cons
-
- Teaches interfaces, delegates, coroutines and namespaces inside a project that actually needs them
- Enemy AI with patrol paths, NavMesh movement and a full saving system, not just a swing animation
- Q&A section praised for sorting out Unity version differences when a reviewer gets stuck
- 4.8 stars from more than 11,000 reviews, and updated as recently as July 2025
-
- First recorded in 2017; several reviewers say some videos show older Unity versions and need small fixes
- Occasionally assumes more advanced knowledge than intermediate, and some challenges are underexplained
- Covers combat only; inventory, abilities and dialogue are three separate paid courses
3
Unity Game Development Build 2D & 3D Games (2018)
4.3
Five real games, real assets and 35 hours of Unity for absolute beginners, held back by a 2018 update date and instructors who debug on camera.
Best for: Total beginners who learn by building playable games with proper art and don't mind an older Unity editor.
Pros
Cons
-
- Full projects with professional-looking assets: zombie rush, tower defense, fantasy adventure, Minecraft clone, MOBA
- Reviewers call the teaching clear and funny; Mark Price gets credit for showing best practices
- Opens with a C# primer, so no coding background is needed
- Reviewers come out confident in Unity; the zombie, tower defense and fantasy sections get the most praise
-
- Last updated September 2018; reviewers say the multiplayer section is completely outdated
- Instructors code on the fly and spend long stretches debugging on camera
- Minecraft clone section is thin on explanation, and Q&A responses are slow
Best Paid Course
4
Complete C# Unity 3D Game Development in Unity 6 (2026)
4.7
Five finished 3D games, from a simple dodge game to a first-person shooter, teach C# and Unity 6 from zero in about 27 hours, with the content refreshed in 2026.
Best for: Complete beginners who want to learn C# by shipping five small 3D games rather than reading about classes first.
Pros
Cons
-
- Challenge-then-solution format: one reviewer was solving problems before the instructor posed them
- Short, focused lectures (192 over 27 hours) that reviewers say are easy to follow
- Covers real systems: nav mesh AI, raycasting, object pooling, procedural generation, ProBuilder
- Rick Davidson's opening sections explain everything from the ground up, per beginner reviews
-
- Second instructor Stephen Hubbard moves fast and often skips the why, a common complaint from beginners
- One 3-star review flags a distracting mouse-spinning habit; another says subtitles sometimes fail to load
- Breadth over depth: a 4-star review says it gets your feet wet but is not enough to master
5
Welcome To Game Design - Introduction to Game Design Theory (2024)
4.3
A free 90 minute primer on what a game is and how the games industry works, with a Game Design Document template thrown in, for people who have never studied design.
Best for: Complete newcomers who want the vocabulary of game design and the industry before touching an engine.
Pros
Cons
-
- Free and only 90 minutes, so it costs one evening to find out if game design interests you
- Downloadable slides and a Game Design Document template that one reviewer calls the best part
- Covers industry structure, publishing stores and licensing alongside the basic theory
- Beginners say it lays out basic concepts that other courses jump straight past
-
- Low-star reviews say it is an industry overview that never goes deep on actual design
- Much of the advice is the instructor's opinion with few cited sources; consoles never come up
- Quiet audio early on, slow delivery, and subtitles reviewers found inaccurate
6
Master Unity By Building 6 Fully Featured Games From Scratch (2018)
4.4
Learn How To Plan, Design, Create And Publish Your Games On Any Platform Using Unity Game Engine
What You'll Learn
- Program And Solve Complicated Problems Using C#
- Organize Project, Slice And Animate Sprites
- Learn How To Use New Unity UI System
- Create Menus, Levels And Loading Screens
- Learn Unitys Physics System
- Encript And Save Your Game Data Using Binary I/O
- Create Level And Character Lock/Unlock System
- Play Music In Your Game
- Implement In-App Purchase And Sell Virtual Items
- Implement Social Media In Your Game
- Share On Facebook From Your Game
- Implement Video And Interstitial Ads
- Implement Watch Video Earn Virtual Item System
- Publish Your Game On Google Play
7
Adobe Illustrator: Mastering the Fundamentals (2018)
4.5
Learn powerful illustration techniques in Adobe Illustrator master digital painting and graphic design with new skills!
What You'll Learn
- To learn Adobe Illustrator from scratch
- To learn only the tools and techniques you will actually use
8
Learn Professional 2D Game Graphic Design in Photoshop (2017)
4.5
Learn how you can create your own professional game graphics quickly in Photoshop!
What You'll Learn
- Build professional stylized backgrounds from scratch in Photoshop
- Make Money from your new skills
- Create your own game graphics
9
Learn Blender 3D Modeling for Unity Video Game Development (2026)
4.8
Master Blender for Game Development: Learn to Create 3D Props, Design Levels, Apply Materials & Animations for Unity
What You'll Learn
- Model and design game-ready 3D assets in Blender with confidence, from props to environment pieces.
- Modify and optimize existing Unity assets by editing them in Blender for seamless integration.
- Apply materials, textures, and UV mapping to create visually polished models suitable for game development.
- Create low-poly, optimized 3D models tailored for real-time rendering in Unity or other game engines.
- Master basic animation techniques in Blender and Unity to bring objects to life.
- Understand Blenders essential features for game developers, focusing on efficiency and workflow optimization.
10
Math For Video Games: The Fastest Way To Get Smarter At Math (2025)
4.7
Learn Math for Video Game Design & Coding through Solving fun Video Game Problems
What You'll Learn
- Fundamental math concepts
- Number base manipulation including binary, decimal and hex
- Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in multiple bases
- IEEE754 floating point and why it matters
- Deeply understand vector space in 2D, 3D and higher!
- Trigonometry calculations such as sin, cos and tan
- More advanced vector math such as dot and cross products
- Projectile motion mathematics
- Combinatorics and probability theory and where to use it
11
The Canva Master Course for 2026 and Beyond!
4.7
The ultimate Canva resource for anyone looking to level-up their design and social media marketing game
What You'll Learn
- Learn Canva and the smart workflow approach that will continually save you time
- Learn to create animated graphics, ebooks, videos, presentations, and much more
- Learn to create custom templates that will allow you to stay on top of your content marketing
- Learn graphic design fundamentals and how to easily apply them to your designs
- Understand the differences between free and paid Canva and figure out which one is right for you
- Stay up to date on all the latest Canva features
- Learn how to organize and store all your brand assets for quick and easy use
- Master Canva grids and how to use them to created advanced design layouts
- Learn to create cool special effects like realistic drop shadows and photo frame pop-outs
- Learn how to integrate Canva with other platforms like dropbox, google drive, Instagram, etc.
- Learn how to download your final assets and how to share your design templates with others