| I absolutely understand the upsides of the assets store. Although not as expansive as the asset store, there are lots of either free or extremely affordable; many of them with CC0 licenses or licenses that make them extremely easy to just use them. I wouldn't have been able to make my first game in Godot Puck Fantasy (available here: <https://www.lowkeyart.com/puckfantasy>) without them! I would encourage you to try some of these! You'd be surprised how far you can get by using these, with and without modification. These are my favorite resources, in order of preference. - <https://www.kenney.nl/> is by far the best one and most expansive one. Everything he creates is CC0. A lot of great free assets available on his site. He also has a "Kenney Game Assets All-in-1" which can be bought on itch.io for $19.95. It has all assets he's ever made, neatly organized, and ready to use. All CC0. This also includes some music. The music and sound assets are much more limited than the 2D and 3D assets, but it's there, and it's solid. - <https://kaylousberg.com/game-assets> has some fantastic assets also available for free, and has more available for a pretty affordable Patreon tier. Also has a CC0 license for the free assets. Mostly a specific style, which is great for consistency, but a bit more limited than the wide variety of Kenney; but I don't doubt that with time they'll build an equally strong library of assets. - <https://quaternius.com/> has many free great assets. Also CC0. Has a high variety of styles and settings. Also has a very affordable Patreon to get easy access to everything they produce. - <https://github.com/Miziziziz/Retro3DGraphicsCollection> is a general place linking to more assets that should be usable. Separately from this, itch.io has a section for game assets that has a pretty wide variety. |
I also prefer the separation between the engine and asset store. I would rather not have a magic button I press in my IDE to have asset show up in the game.