

Price and License: Beginner's package is free, $35/month for Unity Plus, $125/month for Unity Pro "Just start! It's fun and relatively easy-and doesn't really cost you much but time." - Duncan Drummond, Risk of Rain

The more mistakes you make the more you'll learn." - Alx Preston, Hyper Light Drifter "Get started! Get involved, get as much help as you can. "Don't forget to delete your work! Starting over frequently is a great way to work your design muscles." - Mark Essen, Nidhogg Drummond also noted that GameMaker doesn't translate to any other engines, so if you're looking to make the jump to Unity or another engine down the line, this might not be the tool for you. "It's very easy and fast to develop, but does come at a performance cost if done incorrectly," he says. "I like that in the beginning stages of a project you can iterate quickly and focus on the game design, but down the line this will bite you in the butt if you don't maintain some personal organizational standards!"ĭuncan Drummond, the creator of beloved roguelike Risk of Rain, also noted that GameMaker's ease of use can come back to haunt developers. "Because GameMaker is so forgiving with its code, projects can get messy very quickly," Essen says.

Of course, you might not be making a Steam-ready game right off the bat. He notes that young developers should be ".learning the best places to get support in the community and the best tricks to use for the engine to achieve what you want-usually by going to the community as a resource." A marketplace also offers add-ons to customize the engine to build a platformer or top-down RPG.Īlx Preston, the mind behind Hyper Light Drifter, says that the GameMaker community is a huge asset. Mark Essen, creator of Nidhogg and Nidhogg 2, says GameMaker is great for beginners because scripting is pretty open-ended, and Yoyo Games has a wealth of tutorials and guides to help folks get set up quickly.
