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250 Indie Games You Must Play – Several Developed with GameMaker

250 Indie Games You Must Play by Mike RoseSeveral games developed with GameMaker are featured in 250 Indie Games You Must Play published last month.

The 250 Indie Games in question have been selected by Mike Rose one of the editors at IndieGames.com.  The chosen games are divided into 3 sections, first come 120 free desktop based games, followed by 80 free browser based games and finally 50 commercial desktop titles.

In an interview with GnomesLair Mike writes “the main idea was to present a list that would pull non indie gamers in and convert them, yet also give veteran indie gamers something to flick through and relive all those classic titles, while filling in any blanks they may have”.  With 250 Indie Games You Must Play I think Mike has done just that.

For people whose only exposure to the indie gaming scene has been Minecraft the book demonstrates that there is a lot more talent out there, whilst gamers familiar with more indie titles can use the book to find their next gaming fix even if they are already familiar with some of the 250 games.

Each of the featured games is afforded a single page, laid out in a consistent format, which provides details about the game in the form of (usually) three paragraphs of text followed by a single full-colour gameplay screenshot.

To access each game there is a handy short URL which redirects you to a webpage from which the game can be downloaded or played.  Handy both in the sense that these web addresses are quick to access and also as if the current site hosting a particular game goes down the link can be updated to point to a new location so the information in the book will remain valid for years to come.

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Each Indie game is presented on its own page

There are websites that feature high quality indie games, such as IndieGames.com itself, but this book is not the same.  It picks out some of the very best games released over the last few years and presents them together consistently, concisely and away from the clutter of chaff and non-playable content.

The majority of the featured games have just one credited programmer and most have been released in the last couple of years though there are some older titles such as Clean Asia!. All games are playable on PC but some are also available for Mac and other platforms such as They Need to be Fed and World of Goo which have made it on to other devices.

GameMaker developers Jesse Venbrux, Daniel Remar, Greg Lobanov and Jonatan Söderström have some of their games featured amongst a healthy collection of GameMaker developed titles.

You can get to grips with most of the games featured after just a few minutes playing time but could potentially be lost in them for many hours.  Certainly don’t expect to get through the book in one sitting, this is much more of a coffee table book, a real indie gaming encyclopaedia. The book’s size, at slightly larger than a standard paperback, lends itself to being easily flicked through.

Some of the best GameMaker creations appear alongside those developed using other languages or game engines forming a book of incredibly detailed fun games that span many genres, and best of all most are completely free!

250 Indie Games You Must Play by Mike Rose, published by CRC Press, has recently sold its 500th copy and is available to buy at Amazon USA ($21.55) and Amazon UK (£16.52).

What do you think?

6 Comments

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  1. I count 39 Game Maker games in the Download based section and those are only out of the ones I’ve played. In addition there’s several in the Browser section which have GM version due to prototyping etc (eg. Garden Gnome Carnage, Depict1). There’s also some in the commercial section like the Oil Blue but I have no idea how many (I don’t think there’s a lot). So yeah, it’s a fair whack 😀

  2. Wow, cheers for the write-up Philip, really glad you enjoyed it! To be honest, I bet I could easily do a ‘250 Game Maker Indie Games’ book and have no problems filling it – so many awesome GM games!

  3. Is it clear which games are made with GameMaker? Is that information included in the book? If so, I would really be interested in knowing how many of the games in the book were created with GameMaker.

    – Mark

    • Some of the games it mentions were made with GameMaker, others it doesn’t mention but I know they are GameMaker games. If I attempted to list them all I would definitely miss some out!

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