I’d really have to say, from what I hear about Construct (which I’ve not used),
Game Maker is an introduction to programming for younger people, but yet very powerful for those willing to work hard for something good;
Construct sounds almost like a user-defined interface – very open source. So, for those who know more about OOP programming, Construct is perhaps a more flexible option, but only if they know how to program their own objects/interface components. Once you learn that you can really, perhaps, do anything.

Game Maker is powerful, but it has a limit – a very far limit – but still a limit. It’s easy to use, but it can’t do everything (e.g. you can’t make a fast-running wave file editor in GM, unless you use a lot of dll work perhaps).

Construct sounds like something that, with enough background work, can do very much, and is only limited by the user’s understanding of both the interface and the code.

Lack or Tutorials:

Their are no good/quality tutorials like for GameMaker, the ones on YouTube are all rushed and half-assed abd whenever you click on the help file they take you straight to the construct2 web-page ( I don’t know if thats a joke or if they really just want you to get construct 2 ). Their the forum sites for this but this is still a disappointment while game maker has a forum site aswell and a book and a bunch of useful youtube videos and a blog and very good documentation and user feedback and more…

Lazy Interface:

the interface is O.K and so are the nifty behaviors but apart from that its very disorganized, its not easy to control layers, their just a list of properties on the side which make no sense for a begger like me ( again a good tutorial could have fixed this )

Lack of good resources:

The free resources are complete shit and if you want anything worthwhile you have to pay for construct2, not sure if its the same for construct 1 but their still no good free resources while other engines like rpg maker and game maker have a lot of quality free resources online FOR FREE!

No Scripting:

I know that’s part of the deal but most engines allow for scripting like again game makers GML and rpg makers RGSS1-2 e.t.c so far I don’t see any kind of script editor or nothing which is very limiting

Bugs:

Your forgetting this was made by amature hobyist programmers, Mark Overmars ( the guy who made game maker ) is no amature while these guys are a bunch of collage kids. I also heard in some cases the engine might crash due to overplay. Game Maker rarely ever crashes and if their is any bug its most probably your fault.

Mapping limitations:

In game maker you can use a background as a tile and also as a backdrop, in construct its just drag and drop for a very flat looking game with no depth at all, again I have no idea how the mapping is supposed to work otherwise due to lack of decent tutorials that don’t tell me otherwise.

Limited to only web based games:
This might change but as of now it looks this way and game maker is soon to support porting games to apple and android at least.

This was the biggest disappointment since I tried Game Editor ( and at least that has some sort of scripting capabilities, lousy tutorials but they tried with the documentation )

My overall rating is 2 stars, those being only for the niffty behavours and zoom capabilities but its just a pretty package and a whole lot less that it claims to be.

Game Maker will always be a lot more reliable and efficient, it might not look as cool, it might not have all these built in lazy functions and fancy behaviors but with a bit of patience and logic and imagination, you can make some really amazing games.

Play some construct games, all they have are flash-styled shooters and a space invaders con for starters, a few O.Kish games here and there, play GameMaker games and you will be much more amazed at the variety, the quality, the intuitiveness of game maker and the superiority of its near limitless capabilities.

Construct and Construct2 are all just hype!

Construct is going closed source and commercial.
Game Maker is going multiplatform, its editor now supports zoom and pan and it gets updated more often.