Game Maker

Game Maker is a game development software application written by Mark Overmars in the Delphi programming language. Overmars released it in 2000. It is designed to allow its users to easily develop computer games without having to learn a complex programming language such as C++ or Pascal. For experienced users, Game Maker contains a built-in scripting programming language called "GML", or "Game Maker Language". Games can be distributed under any license (including no license), as non-editable executable ".exe" files or as the source code file (.gmk, .gm6, .gmd, .gmf) itself.

To extend the drag-and-drop functionality of Game Maker, users can use files called Libraries to add new drag-and-drop items to the lists. These can be created with a special library builder.

Game Maker is available in a free version and a registered version. The registered version, which costs €15 (about $25), has more features than the free version. Some of these features include the ability to incorporate DLLs, create multiplayer games, take advantage of Direct3D to create first person shooters and the like, use particles, and utilize advanced drawing functions. The free version, while still having more than enough features for a novice programmer, displays a small Game Maker Logo during the loading of the user's game.

Current Game Maker Version
The current version of Game Maker is Game Maker 8.1, the second release of Game Maker under YoYo Games.