GameMaker Technical Showcase
New and prospective users of GameMaker IDEs often ask whether GameMaker is a suitable choice for their games; often with concerns over features, capabilities, or performance.
To ease the decision, I’m putting together a showcase of some examples of what is possible in GameMaker. Some are released games, some are from game jams, others are tech demos or experiments.
3D
While GameMaker was not designed for extensive 3D work, users have nonetheless pushed the limits of what GameMaker is capable of in terms of 3D.
Alexander Kondyrev
Alexander Kondryev released an impressive open source PBR (Physics Based Rendere) shader for GMS2, supporting a metallness/roughness model. Alexander Kondryev is well-known in the GameMaker community for his work with 3D.
DanDavisGames
Daniel Davis is another well-known GameMaker developer whose 3D games built in GMS1.4 employ a low-poly style. Two of his 3D games are available on his itch.io page.
GamingEngineer
GamingEngineer’s Youtube channel showcases a few impressive 3D games made in GMS1.4, including tutorials for how you would go about making your own. The demos feature extremely detailed 3D environments with photorealistic reflectance and specularity mapping.
Gripper
An in-development story-driven RPG game being made by Kirill Zolovkin and Alexander Kondyrev, that started from GamesJam Kanobu; featuring eye-popping visuals in top-down 3D perspective.
Skychasers
An in-development game, Skychasers, is a side-scrolling fast-paced aerial combat game that employs a 3D backdrop in some menus, demonstrating some of GM’s 3D capabilities even if not for the game itself. The 2D components of the game are worth checking out too.
Commercial Successes
The clearest or perhaps loudest examples of what can be achieved with Gamemaker are the commercially successful games built with it. Here are some of the commercially successful games that aren’t included in other sections.
It’s also worth taking a look at YoYoGame’s official Made with GameMaker Showcase page
Hyper Light Drifter
A hugely influential and award-winning GameMaker game, with its unique visual style; storytelling; and pacing.
Undertale
Award-winning GameMaker game Undertale is no doubt one of the biggest names on this page. It’s no small feat for Undertale to have reached cult status.
Crafting
Crafting and survival games are very much in the vogue, devs will ask whether GameMaker is suitable for the technical complexity of crafting systems. The answer is an easy yes.
Crashlands
Galactic delivery crafting survival game Crashlands was built in GameMaker, featuring an extensive crafting system
Forager
Originally a jam game, Forager by HopFrog is quickly gaining renown as a highly-anticipated indie game, and has already been picked up by Humble Bundle. Listen to our interview with HopFrog on our podcast obj_podcast.
HD Art (i.e. non-pixel-art)
GameMaker is often associated with pixel-art games, unsurprisingly as some of the top commercial games made in GameMaker happened to have been pixel-art games. Prospective gamedevs often ask if GameMaker is up to the task of handling higher-definition art styles; while there leaves some features to be desired in terms of handling vector formats, GameMaker is nonetheless perfectly capable of handling higher resolutions as these games and demos show.
Orphan
Recently released 2D platformer Orphan’s distinct style is a beauty to behold.
Symmetry
Side-scrolling survival game Symmetry employs a beautifully stark style, also showcasing GameMaker’s Spine integration for skeleton-based animation.
Synthetik
Synthetik’s clean and modern style is stunning to look at.. The game also features online coop.
Jesus_3k
Jesus_3k’s in-development NHAKT game features seamless pre-rendered 3D sprites.
MMO
Every so often, a user would ask whether GameMaker can be used to make MMOs. The answer is not “no”, though we always warn people to temper their ambitions, as GameMaker alone is not enough to make an MMO; a fair amount of experience is needed to build out the rest of the server infrastructure needed to support a large number of players being online and sharing the same game session.
Cookie Companion MMO
Ok, I’ll admit, this is a bit of a self-plug. I’ve been pondering on and off the question of MMOs in GameMaker for some time, doing a bit of research into netcode, and experimenting with different ways clients could be written in GameMaker and servers written in Python. I finally put what I had learned to the test and attempted to make an MMO for the 48-hour game jam GM48. This is what I came up with: A game that is barely classifiable as an MMO, yet I feel proves the concept: GameMaker can be used to make MMO clients, as long as they connect to some larger infrastructure that is built to support many players being online. I hope to explore building more MMOs in the future.
Rhythm Games
Some devs ask whether GameMaker’s audio capabilities are up to the task of synchronising with game-play for rhythm games. While some work is needed to ensure perfect sync, these games show that it is indeed possible:
Lofi Ping Pong
In-development Ping Pong game combines rhythm game with gritty underground ping pong action. Calvares has also released another rhythm game Trisqenta, which is worth checking out.
Paper Knight
Idiosyncratic medieval-themed rhythm game, Paper Knight shows off rhythm, and an extensive upgrade system. Another game by Kirill Zolovkin
Scale
Devs often have big plans for their games, and want to know if GM can handle the scale of their game. While HLD is regarded as a larger GM game, here’s an example of an even larger game built in GM, packed full of content and assets.
Starship Corporation
Weighing in at over 1GB, Starship Corporation is the largest released game made in Gamemaker that I know about.
Visual Novels
Not only is GM well-suited for Visual Novels as the below examples show, but several extensions exist on the GM marketplace that assist in that endeavour, whether by providing an entire framework for building VNs, or providing powerful text formatting tools.
Cinders
Fairytale for grownups, Cinders, features beautiful artwork and player choice in a VN format.
VA-11 Hall-A
Something about this quirky cyberpunk-themed VN game where you’re just the bartender to what might be a larger story-line happening outside appeals to me. This is a game close to my heart.
Know of any other games that I should include in this article? Is your game on this list and want me to include more information or make a correction? Tweet at me!
