Prerequisits

Bare Necessities

• .NET 6 sdk or above.
• A text editor of choice

That's it, really. Technically you can use the console commands and notepad to build up a game.

It would not be a pleasant experience, but you could.

At it's core, .NET handles the compilation of code into a finished product, and MonoGame itself can be installed through the builtin Nuget package manager.

Strongly recommend against this approach, as even a simple code editor like Visual Studio Code has tools and plugins to make development and debugging infinitely easier.

Recommended

Environment

• .NET 8 sdk
• .NET 6 sdk Monogame runs happily in .NET 8
• Monogame Project Templates
• (Android Only) .NET Android Workload
• (Android Only) Android Studio
• (IOS Only) .NET Ios Workload

Supported Editors / IDEs

• Visual Studio 2022 (Community Edition is fine)
• Visual Studio Code (Cross Platform)
• Jetbrains Rider (Paid, Cross platform)

Extras

It would be highly recommended to have some sort of image editor handy. Even if you're using free / premade assets from else where, it can be useful to change colours and resize before importing.

Check out Resources/External/Applications for ideas.