Setting up game inventory systems in Unity is a difficult but extremely important task. A well-crafted inventory system makes it easier for you to store, remove, and add different items related to your game. This might include items for players, cosmetics, or even unlockable things like currency and levels.

At Beamable, we understand the struggle of indie developer as they race to build all of the game and metagame features required for a successful player experience. To help out, we’ve curated this list of resources to point you at some methods for implementing an inventory system in Unity.

Unity Learn

Use this tutorial to learn about setting up a character inventory system in Unity. By the end of these lessons, you’ll find yourself comfortably:

• Building out a useful inventory system
• Setting up different interfaces for unity inventory systems
• Creating pieces of code for different inventory items
• Linking the items with the actual gameplay

Here are the various topics that this tutorial covers:

• Creating a character inventory system – overview
• Building out an inventory system
• Setting up a user interface
• Inventory items
• Linking item actions to the actual gameplay

GameDev Academy

GameDev Academy is a wonderful resource. Their website hosts different free courses and eBooks for game developers to learn from.

GameDev Acadmy’s tutorial on creating inventory and crafting systems in Unity will teach you how to code your own inventory inspired by Minecraft.

Check out this course to learn the various nuances behind organizing your data by creating Item and Recipe objects, managing your database, as well as more advanced topics like drag and drop.

GameDev Academy’s tutorial on creating a Unity Inventory System includes the following concepts:

• Creating an Inventory and a Crafting System in Unity
• Creating the Crafting Recipe Class to Define the Inventory System in Unity
• Creating an Item Database for an Inventory System in Unity

There’s an even more extensive course, also offered by GameDev Academy, that you can check out here.

Unity RPG Inventory System

This tutorial walks you through the process of building a Unity inventory which allows the players to collect, store, and retrieve a variety of items. Using screenshots, gifs, and explanatory text, this tutorial by MVCode is quite exhaustive and explains all the different options, settings, and code pieces you might require while building a Unity inventory system for a Role-Playing Game (RPG) title.

MVCode also offers extensive courses on Unity Development, and this is just one part of the entire course. You can log in to their website and check out various other courses related to game development.

inScope Studios Tutorial

This comprehensive video tutorial series contains many inventory tutorial videos. This is one of the more extensive tutorials on the list and touches on important concepts like:

• Tooltips
• Dropping Items
• BankStorage
• Bug Fixing
• Generating the XML document
• Picking up the XML items
• Character panel layout
• Equipping weapons
• Preparing for item crafting, and a lot more!

Blackthornprod Tutorial

Blackthornprod is a YouTube channel run by Noa Calice, an indie game developer and educator, and co-creator of four Udemy courses around game development. The YouTube channel is a must for every indie game developer looking to explore the world of game development.

Among other courses and tutorials, Blackthornprod’s YouTube channel has a beginner course on creating inventory systems with Unity and C#. In this 2-part series, you’ll first learn about creating the UI for the inventory, giving players the ability to pick up items and add them to their inventory, and then getting the player character dropping items from the inventory back into the game world.

Code Monkey Tutorial

Code Monkey is a game developer and YouTube content creator who creates game dev specific content. This includes different tutorial series, game and game dev reviews, Unity tips, and more. The tutorial on Simple Inventory System in Unity teaches you how to make a simple but robust Inventory System to store, use, and drop items.

Dennis (Comprehensive Video Tutorials)

This is an extremely comprehensive, 12-part video series, that teaches you everything about creating the Crafting and Inventory UI. It’s a beginner-friendly tutorial and by the end of this, you’ll be creating fully functional crafting and inventory systems for any RPG/FPS game.

Simplify Inventory Management with Beamable Inventory

To simplify inventory management even further, check out Beamable. Our Inventory Flow allows game makers to easily set up a complete inventory experience using Unity. Using simple drag-and-drop features, we make the process of creating and setting up inventories extremely easy. Check out the documentation to know about Beamable’s inventory management in more detail

Did we miss something?

Let us know your favorite Unity inventory tutorial in the comments below. If we’ve missed something – do let us know!