Beginner learning materials on how to reverse engineer video games
Here is a compiled list based on personally recommended learning materials to help people with the process of learning how to reverse engineer video games.
I hope it will help others spend more time learning and less time searching.
Majority of the collected resources here will be focused on reversing PC games on the Microsoft Windows operating system with x86 assembly in mind over x64 as it is easier to learn.
Reversing engineering video games is more often than not related to "game hacking", they come and go together so don't be surprised if some of the learning materials come from such sites/sources.
It's not recommended to run any of these tools (especially Cheat Engine) while playing multiplayer games that have anti-cheat systems in place, unless you know what you are doing.
For starters get familiar with Cheat Engine, and either IDA or Ghidra.
Memory scanners:
Disassemblers / Decompilers / Debuggers:
Process Tools:
PE Tools:
Network Tools:
Other:
Before getting to work on a game you must know your target, so it's important to gather some information such as:
Games sharing the same engines often have really similar and recurring codebase that you can use to your advantage. For third-party game engines such as Unreal Engine or Unity there are a lot of custom tools online that can ease the process of reverse engineering.
Games coded in high-level interpreted/intermediate programming languages such as C# or Java are generally much easier to reverse engineer as compared to C/C++, due to the metadata not being lost as they aren't compiled into low-level machine code.
For Unity-based games (and for any other games developed with the .Net Framework) use dnSpy instead of IDA/Ghidra.
We are mainly going to focus on reversing games coded in C++ as it is still the gold standard in video game programming.
Examples of games made with C++:
Examples of games made with C#:
Guides to game reversing:
Guides to x86 assembly:
Guides to IDA:
Basic game programming concepts:
Books:
Google:
More x86 assembly learning material:
Other useful tools and tool guides:
Practical reverse engineering and game hacking materials:
Bit flags and bit masks:
Books and papers:
Curated lists of tools, tutorials, resources, and much more for reverse engineering video games:
Guided Hacking resources (As of 2023 it is now paywalled content):