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If you’re looking for an enjoyable way to learn how to make computer games, then this is the book for you. You don’t need a degree in computer science and you won’t have to read a book the size of a telephone directory—everything you need is right here. As long as you can use Windows without breaking into a cold sweat, you have all the qualifications you need to start making your own games. In the chapters ahead, we’ll show you how to make nine complete games and pass on some of our hard-earned professional experience in game design along the way. Already, you are just two chapters away from completing your first game and have taken your first step along the path of the game maker’s apprentice!

Learning something new is always a little daunting at first, but things will start to become familiar in no time. In fact, by the end of this chapter, you’ll have completed your very first gaming masterpiece!

We hope you enjoyed making Evil Clutches and that it gave you a sense of how easy Game Maker is to use. However, you can achieve so much with a bit more knowledge, so let’s move on to our second project and do something a little more adventurous.

Our third game will be an action game that challenges players to make quick decisions under pressure—and if they’re not fast enough then they’ll get squished! We’ll introduce some new techniques for putting character animation into the game, and show how a controller object can be used to help to manage the game.

Once you’ve caught the game-making bug, then it’s only a matter of time before you’ll want to start designing your own games. There’s nothing more satisfying than realizing your creative ideas and seeing other people enjoy them, and that’s precisely what making games is all about. We don’t want you to feel that you have to finish this book before trying out your own ideas—have a go whenever you feel ready, as you can always come back for more knowledge and ideas when you need them. Nonetheless, there is more to designing a good game than having a cool idea for a character or story, so these design chapters are here to provide some helpful advice for designing your own projects.

These days, some of the most inventive games come out of Japan. Japanese designers have a history of taking crazy design scenarios and turning them into brilliantly addictive games (e.g., Puzzle-Bobble, Pikmin, Gitaroo Man). Japanese games also have their own distinctive look derived from manga comics. In this chapter we’ll make our own game in this style, based around the classic game of Breakout. In doing so, we’ll learn how to use parent objects, one of Game Maker’s most powerful features. As always, though, we’ll need to start by writing a quick description of our game design.

Maze games have been popular since the days of Pac-Man, and they’re another kind of game that’s easy to make in Game Maker. In this chapter, we’ll create a puzzle game where the player must help koala bears escape from a maze full of hazardous obstacles. The focus of the game will be on puzzles rather than action, and the levels will be designed to make the player think carefully about the strategies they must use to avoid any unpleasant accidents. (No animals were hurt in the making of this game.)

Even the most captivating game ideas will eventually become dull if the challenges never change. Good level design is about providing players with new and interesting challenges as they progress through the game. Usually this requires a steady flow of fresh features that introduce new equipment, opponents, enemies, or obstacles into the gameplay. Creating the right kind of features is as important to good level design as the way those features are used in the levels themselves. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at the issues surrounding level design and try to give you some pointers for designing your own games.

Up to now we’ve only created single-player games, but for the next two chapters we’ll be creating games that are played with a friend. This chapter’s game will require players to cooperate in order to succeed, while the next will make players compete against one another for ultimate supremacy. Cooperative multiplayer games challenge players to work together and sometimes even make sacrifices for each other in order to succeed in their common goals.

Combat arenas are a popular theme in multiplayer games, because they create extremely compelling gameplay from very simple ingredients. This can often just be an environment filled with weapons that the players can use to wipe each other out. The game that we’re going to create in this chapter is exactly that, with futuristic battle tanks. Although games like this are relatively easy to make, care must be taken in their design to ensure that both players feel they are being treated fairly. We’ll discuss this more in Chapter 11 .