Having been put though its paces by a 7,000-strong beta program over the past month - ranging from amateurs to professional game makers - YoYo Games is positioning its tool as the simplest, quickest, and most powerful 2D game creation package available.
Fit for purpose
Combining a drag-and-drop interface with support for platforms ranging from HTML5 and Facebook to Android, iOS, Symbian, Windows and OS X, YoYo Games says GameMaker: Studio brings entirely new functionality and performance to the GameMaker community, which is cumulatively over 500,000-strong.
"Users of GameMaker: Studio can realise productivity gains of 80 percent or more compared with native coding," said Michael Dailly, YoYo's head of development, also known for his work on Lemmings and GTA.
"Fully functional prototypes can be created in just a few hours while full games can be 'app store ready' in just a matter of weeks. Multiple outputs make deployment across all popular formats simultaneous and seamless."
Publish everywhere
The key part of the current release is the ability to release on multiple platforms - more than other 'industry-standard' engines such as Unity, Unreal Engine, Shiva and GameSalad.
In addition, extension packages can be added to GameMaker: Studio to handle social networking, advertising and payment systems, while support for new platforms is expected to be announced in due course.
The full feature list is below:
- Export native iOS and Android packages
- Produce ready-to-run HTML5 web code for Facebook or web publishing
- Export native executables for Windows and Mac
- Native source control environment
- Powerful scripting language and internal customisable code editor
- Native physics support
- Internal image editors
- Advanced IDE that includes path and timeline editors
Cheap at half the price?
In terms of pricing, GameMaker: Studio is available for a base cost of $99, which gets you the ability to release for Windows and OS X.
HTML5 support costs an additional $99, while iOS and Android exports are $199 each. These prices are lifetime per seat for the current version.
GameMaker: Studio is now available for download at www.yoyogames.com.
