Unity has established itself as the default middleware for indie developers these days (with Unreal Engine snapping at its heels), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t extremely capable alternatives kicking about. One such alternative is GameMaker: Studio, which usually retails at $US50 for the Standard edition, but is currently free until 2 March.
Even if you don’t have any immediate aspirations to develop your own game, it can’t hurt to have a copy available for a creative rainy day. All you have to do to cash in is download the free version and install it, after which you’ll be provided instructions to activate the Standard edition.
If you already have GameMaker: Studio Standard, or want to go all out while the deal is available, you can update to Professional for $US35, a discount on the usual $US99.99 price tag.
Promotions [Yoyo Games, via Gamasutra]
Comments
12 responses to “Get Yourself GameMaker: Studio Free (Or A Discounted Pro Edition)”
I wouldn’t mind downloading this, but I’m curious about how easy it is to use for a novice, with absolutely no knowledge of coding/programming.
its actually pretty easy im not good at programming but this is rather easy to use
Cheers for the info. What sort of platforms can you create games for, is it PC only or can you make iPhone/Android apps, and XBLA/PSN games?
Also, what extras do you get in the pro version that you don’t get in the standard version?
And what are the PC requirements to be able to run the program?
As far as I know, the requirements are quite small, I can even run it on my mother’s terrible computer.
With the Standard version you can export to Windows(including 8) and Mac, with the Pro version you can export to Android, iOS, HTML5, Windows 8 phone and Linux.
If you’re curious as to the viability and quality of the games made in this, check out this http://www.yoyogames.com/showcase
There are some pretty amazing games listed there that you may have even played.
Oddly enough, I just looked at the showcase in the link and Spelunky was there which is the topic of an article just above this one. So obviously Gamemaker for free is a pretty good deal and does the job.
It was the original Spelunky that was made in Gamemaker (available free from here: http://spelunkyworld.com/original.html), not the updated one on Steam + consoles. However, the original one is just as tight, if not quite as pretty.
Vlambeer are also making Nuclear Throne in Gamemaker, and that looks like crazy amounts of fun.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/242680/
It can definitely do the job, if the job is a graphically simple 2d game. You can make PC games with it, and while you can make iOS and Android games as well, you have to pay a license fee of $200 each to access those platforms.
The reason they are doing these huge discounts is because Unity is eating all of their market share, especially now that it has a semi-decent 2d implementation. In almost every way, Unity is a better product than Gamemaker. It isn’t nearly as limiting and the free version is all that is needed for most people. Gamemaker probably has an easier learning curve, but I can’t think of too many other advantages it has over Unity.
If you’re just starting in games development, and want to get a handle on how it all works, Gamemaker is awesome. But I would recommend that once you have your feet wet, you attempt to transition over to Unity.
And now to check out Unity. 😛
Thanks ! was looking around for a program like this
I prefer CryEngine because it has all the features for free if you’re making free games.
It’s also worth mentioning that it looks like you can actually upgrade to the Professional Edition for free as well, using this promotion:
http://www.yoyogames.com/developers/promotions/tizen-game-drive/apply
I’ve registered my email address, received a new key, entered it into the Help>Update License section in Gamemaker Studio, and it now shows it as “Professional Edition” in the title bar.
Sweet, thanks for the tip.
Thanks for the heads up dude! Mine says Professional too now. However if you go to about, you don’t have the iOS/Android modules, only the Windows and Tizen ones. So not sure if it’s a proper, full Pro license.
Also this morning is said that it needed to validate my license file once a month. However I have no idea what a license file is! Any idea?
EDIT: Ah, the iOS export is separate at $200 even for the pro.
Brings up the error “The requested product could not be found”.
Does not work anymore.