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.

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).

250 Indie Games You Must Play – Several Developed with GameMaker is taken from: GameMaker Blog

The book will feature a number of “recipes” providing step by step instructions and additional information on how to implement various desired game effects. The book will cover a wide range of GameMaker’s feature set including basic drag and drop movement, sprite and sound effects and data structures and particles.

Work on the book restarted in September last year after an earlier attempt to create a book with the same title had been abandoned mid-way by a different author.

The first draft of Game Maker 8 Cookbook, which will sell for £20 ($32), is now complete and the publishing date has been listed as June 2011.  The cover (shown right) contains a scene from Jesse Venbrux’s They Need to be Fed which is available on PC, iOS and Android.

Game Maker 8 Cookbook Announced is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Alexander Aris brought to my attention the fact that print on demand publisher Alphascript are selling a copied-from-Wikipedia paperback which masquerades as a guide to GML [Amazon.co.uk|Amazon.com].

The company seems to specialise in grabbing collections of articles off Wikipedia, sticking them into a book barely edited and charging top whack for them (the GML book costs upwards of £30).

A quick Google reveals that they’ve pissed off a fair few people interested in a wide variety of topics (including librarians!) and Alexander is one of the latest to have the misfortune to come across one of their 100,000 plus products.

The hundred page book features Wikipedia articles around and very loosely connected to Game Maker Language including Mark Overmars, the history of Pascal, C++, Microsoft Direct3D and APIs.

To be fair the book does have a small circle splashed on its front cover which states “High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles!” but even so sticking this book on Amazon is cheeky and I presume, given the rate at which they churn out titles, quite lucrative.

On top of that the people responsible for this can’t even decide whether they are called Alphascript or Betascript publishing.

Stay away from this one. If you are looking to learn Game Maker try the beginners level Getting Started with Game Maker or the more advanced Game Maker’s Companion.

A Game Maker Book to Avoid: Game Maker Language by Alphascript is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Game Maker creator Mark Overmars is not a co-author of this book but Habgood, a former professional game developer and now senior lecturer of Game Development at Sheffield Hallam University, is well qualified to write about game creation.

Jacob is joined by professional games developer Nana Nielsen and long time Game Maker user Martin Rijks (Smarty) who co-author the book.  Once again incredible artwork is provided by Kevin Crossley.

The foreword is written by Game Maker creator Mark Overmars in which he welcomes the appearance of the title as the first book written for more experienced Game Maker users. The book is designed to help those who have already made a handful of games who want to make their future releases appear more professional.

The book begins with a quick overview of the different resource types used within Game Maker, the differences between instances and objects, a look at different types of variables and Game Maker’s co-ordinate and angles system. This only occupies a few pages and is offered as a quick recap and reference guide rather than a full introduction so previous experience of using Game Maker is a prerequisite to reading Companion, later chapters assume prior knowledge of Game Maker Language.

The focus of the book is on the platform game genre and the book walks you through the creation of three such games. The first tutorial is for a very basic platformer, the second on creating a feature rich clone and the third about designing a complex original platform game from scratch.

Fishpod

Chapter 2 takes you through steps to create Fishpod – a simple collect and avoid platform game built around the story of a primeval slime creature hopping away from the sulphurous boiling waters of an underground volcano.

Development begins with the time-consuming process of loading, renaming and centring sprite origins.  Given the large number of resources included on the accompanying CD I was quite surprised to see that there was no .gmk available to load which would take your game status to just after this point.

A time saving platform design technique is used with platform end sections automatically generated in approprite places.  This makes creating new levels a breeze and is one of the simple but effective game development tips taught, it is clear that the book is written by someone who has past experiences they can call upon.

Through the creation of Fishpod a comparison is given between the transparency system used in previous versions of Game Maker and that in Game Maker 8.  There is also a good introduction to the various different collision masks and types complete with practical examples.

Zool

After the basic tutorial the next chunk of Companion is four chapters dedicated to developing a clone of the classic Amiga platformer Zool.  Basic premise – a fast-moving gremlin Ninja runs, slides, climbs and jumps around a colourful world collecting points and disposing of bad guys.

Zool as built in The Game Maker's Companion

The Zool remake is a pretty comprehensive platform game with ramps, views, gravity, sliding, climbing, slippy surfaces, attacking and parallax scrolling all covered.  That said the first two chapters on creating the Zool clone serve as an introduction to the basic elements of any platform game: Movement, changing sprites, collisions, inheritance, jumping and gravity are all implemented using Game Maker’s Drag and Drop action and events system without the need to use any GML code, keeping the learning curve at a sensible gradient.

Unlike for Fishpod a time-saving early .gmk file is ready with all the required resources imported and sprite origins and collisions set up and blank objects immediatly ready for the addition of drag and drop actions.

More sprites are included on the CD than than are used in the tutorial so you can add your own extensions to the Zool clone once you have completed the tutorial.

Shadows on Deck

Shadows on Deck is the final game featured in Companion.  It’s a pirate-themed silhouette style story-driven adventure platform game (quite a mouthful!).  Unlike for the two earlier games (basic and clone), Shadows on Deck takes you along the full game development process from initial concept through brainstorming, design decisions and character and story development.

Illustrated with Nana Nielsen’s concept sketches of protagonist Flynn, his adversaries and the world he lives in this is the largest section of the book coming in at over 150 pages. Quite a lot of space is given over to the discussion of various story structures and character types seen in video games before showing how these can be applied to Shadows on Deck itself.

You get a real insight into the planning process and consideration that went in to almost every aspect of the game.  Dialog trees and flow charts are created and cut scenes storyboarded.  One such example of the level of detail employed is that a plan is drawn up showing when each new player actions and hazards will be introduced as the game progresses.

Seemingly all aspects of creating a game are covered, including the process of designing art from potential sources of inspiration, through concept sketches to digital creation of graphical assets and their animation by Griffin Warner (the book uses Photoshop for this process). Cut scenes are created in a standalone video editor and then imported for use in the game.

Code re-use is encouraged, in this case however an extra step is added as the D&D code added for Zool is first converted into Game Maker Language (ready converted .gmk available). After this all development is in GML, I won’t go into any detail on the advanced elements of the game as there is too much to cover – you’ll have to buy the book to see them!

Away from the games

The final “Feature Reference” section provides walkthroughs and .gmk solutions to around 20 general questions that often crop up at the Game Maker Community. For example ready-made solutions are given to the problems of 360-degree shooting, 8-directional movement and creating mini-maps and pushable objects. Some of these seem a little low-level given the main contents of the book but they are all time saving resources.

Chapters often start with references to the historical development of platform games, providing an interesting lesson on the history of computer gaming for younger readers.

There are plentiful screenshots and illustrations where appropriate throughout the book, I never found myself asking where anything was.   Design devices are present such as state machines, used to demonstrate when the various sprites should be drawn to represent the character in different action states, and when laying out object inheritable structures.

Over 300MB of resources are bundled on the CD

All the resources needed to create the games in the book are included on the bundled CD or, if you buy the eBook version, are available to download from the publisher’s website.  Most of the Fishpod and Shadows on Deck resources can be freely re-used within other Game Maker games however the Zool resources cannot. Mac versions of all the resources are also present.

The CD also includes some handy reference charts such as a key to all Game Maker actions, as well as the Game Maker 8 installer and manual. There are lots of how-to reference files as well.

Both Fishpod and Zool can be created with the free (Lite) version of Game Maker.

The book ends with a suggestion that a future third title dealing with the use of particles, DLLs and more may be written in the future.

Verdict: The best book about Game Maker published to date.  Clear instructions and explanations, information is well-presented and good use is made of the bundled resources to provide demonstrations.  You aren’t rushed through development, plenty of background information is available and justification given for design decisions.  If you ever want to make a platform game this is the book for you, though some of the advice contained in the book will be of benefit to all game developers.

Buy it:

Amazon.com (USA) – $26.39
Amazon.co.uk (Europe) – £21.12

ISBN: 1430228261
Pages: 440, colour.

Review took quite a while to get completed as the book and CD are packed with useful material! Updated 13:43 Oct 22nd with minor corrections

Book Review: The Game Maker’s Companion by Jacob Habgood et al. is taken from: GameMaker Blog

The preface, including full contents list, and first 52 pages are included in the online preview.  The book is written by Jacob Habgood, professional games developer Nanna Nielsen and Martin Rijks (the former GMC administrator Smarty) and features a forward written by Game Maker creator Mark Overmars.

Preview The Game Maker’s Companion is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Jacob Habgood’s Game Maker’s Companion [Amazon: $26.39 US|£23.62 UK], follow up to his successful Game Maker’s Apprentice book co-authored with Mark Overmars, is now scheduled to be released next month. Release was originally planed for April 2010 but that deadline has obviously been and gone with Habgood’s new position as a senior game design lecturer getting in the way. Martin Rijks, better known as former Game Maker Community administrator Smarty, is also involved in the project and we can expect to see some more stunning artwork from Kevin Crossley.

The contents of the book are best described by Jacob himself:

“The book itself focuses on the development of platform games. There are only three example games this time, but their scope is much larger than in the first book and it generally takes several chapters to make each one. One of these games features a character called Zool, which might ring some bells with older readers. Below is some footage of the game actually running in Game Maker: Interestingly this entire version of Zool is created using the Lite version of Game Maker 8 using 95% drag and drop programming. Nonetheless the last (and biggest) example game in the book is made entirely with GML, and brings in storytelling elements (more on that at a later date – as its still being finished off now).”
-Jacob Habgood

The other Game Maker book news I have to report is not as positive.

Birmingham based Packt Publishing were planning to publish a Game Maker cookbook authored by a contributor at the YoYo Games forum. Some of you may know that I have been involved in this project for around two and a half months as a technical reviewer. The book would have featured several ‘recipes’ explaining how to implement particular effects and features into Game Maker games.

Sadly I have now been told that the author is busy with other commitments and the project has been cancelled. I am disappointed both because I quite enjoyed working on the project and also because it promised to be different to the typical beginners guide style introduction. If anyone else is looking to publish a book about game development with Game Maker and is looking for a technical reviewer…

Pre-order The Game Makers Companion on Amazon.com
Pre-order The Game Makers Companion on Amazon.co.uk

Game Maker’s Companion set for August Release, Game Maker Cookbook Cancelled is taken from: GameMaker Blog

A member’s first post at the GMC was promoting this “digital book” and they didn’t really seem to quite get the hang of NPT‘s and KC LC‘s comments questioning the need for the book and the quality of its content.

Hosted on the same server as over three-and-a-half-thousand other domains and registered to an anonymous individual (or organisation) the resources on offer on the eBook website don’t exactly do much to justify a price tag.

I could be wrong.  It could be brilliant.  But I sincerely doubt it. As This Is Indie said, sometimes it is best to judge a book by its cover!

Another dire commercial Game Maker eBook? Most probably. is taken from: GameMaker Blog

As the title suggests the guide is focused on version 8 of Game Maker. A preface advises that the information present is correct for the Pro edition however the vast majority of the details provided are equally true for the free Lite version. Although aimed at “starters” you are obviously expected to already be aware of Game Maker as there is no mention of where it can be obtained.

The contents listing shows that the book is essentially a compilation of questions that people may ask about Game Maker’s capabilities – the majority of which are then answered in 1 or 2 pages illustrated with screenshots.

The guide is certainly not for beginners with no prior experience of programming. Readers are thrown in at the deep end with talk of Direct3D and scripts with no explanation as to what they are – the first question is about Game Maker’s 3D capabilities. An explanation of the various elements of Game Maker comes only on page 43 under the “I am confused – how do the terms Program, Room, Level, Object and Window relate to each others?” question.

A minor irritant is the constant references to ‘GM8′. Incredibly in the entire 161 page book the phrase ‘Game Maker’ is only mentioned 4 times. Whilst this acronym is explained at the start of the book the same is not true of others used throughout the guide. For example an extract of the book reads “GM8 does have cosmetic 3D capability (which is stronger than the 3D feature offered by its competitor MMF)”. Presumably MMF is Multimedia Fusion, a topic with which the author seems to have a mini-obsession given its constant acronymic mentions (he has published two books on the game creation tool), but this is not explained anywhere. Sure a quick Google didn’t hurt but this book is supposed to be providing tips and techniques not causing confusion.

Some of the questions answered are just moot. For example “Should I start with room first or object first?” and hands up who doesn’t have a sound card installed on their current machine. “Is a sound card REQUIRED on the development station?” takes up a page of the guide. Some of the questions seem downright bizarre such as “What is the optimal display resolution and color depth for GM8 to operate at design time?” I doubt many people have even considered asking that question.

There are some more useful questions such as “Why is full screen mode preferable and why should mode change be discouraged at runtime?” which covers an issue that people may initially overlook.

As you will be able to tell from the contents listing, and the questions quoted above, most of the guide is not focused on active game creation but on questions relating to the functionality of the Game Maker software itself.

The Object Design section will probably be the most relevant to most Game Maker users and may help beginners become familiar with the basics of Object Orientated Programming as the basics of sprites, objects, rooms and the concepts of persistency, object instances, collision checking and inheritance are covered. Use of the phrase “this parent object thing” seems very dismissive though. This part of the book also includes interesting responses to queries about using several smaller objects instead of one large object for example to control various weapons on a spaceship or enable certain areas to be more sensitive to damage than others. There are also various questions relating to the use of views before the book abruptly ends with the promise of future updates on the publisher’s website.

Plugs are given to LateralGM the cross-platform Java based Game Maker IDE and Liam Brummitt’s GMToolbox resource site.  I would support the Paint.NET recommendation as I have used the free tool as my sole graphics program for a number of years though it has to be said this mainly consists of simple drawings and screenshots! Again – no link though.

The quality of language is not of the standard I would expect to find in an authoritative guide. For example on the subject of the best Operating System to use part of the response is “Vista itself is way too power hungry. It eats up half of all system resources even when not running anything. Windows Server 2003 is never optimized for front end application like the GM8. Windows 7 is too new”.

“Are GM8 projects and games SECURE?” mentions the Game Maker decompiler but doesn’t make suggestions on how you can protect your game against being readable by using an obfuscater. There are also minor but noticeable mistakes such as a reference to “windows based games” [sic]. My general opinion is that the book has been published too early and lacks the basic explanations required for beginners and the depth required to to be the ultimate Game Maker technical resource for more established game makers. I am struggling to see who the book is really aimed at.

The “How do I measure actual runtime screen performance?” answer tells you to use debug mode. But no explanation as to what it is or how to access it is given until later in the guide.   The whole book seems disjointed.

In short I was disappointed.  There clearly is some potential in the Question and Answers approach taken and some of the answers were quite insightful but the consistency and quality just wasn’t there.

A second volume dealing with “serious coding” is planned for the future.

[AMAZON $13.95]: Game Maker 8 Game Creation: Practical Tips & Techniques Vol.1

Book Review: Game Maker 8 Game Creation – Practical Tips & Techniques Vol.1 is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Game Maker 8 Game Creation – Practical Tips & Techniques Vol.1 has 162 pages.

“The goal of this book is to provide starters with rich technical information so the best decision and judgment can be exercised when creating games through GM8.

This is not a step-by-step tutorial. This is also not a guide book kind of overview material. We place our focus on the practical side of game creation – practical tips and techniques one will definitely need when starting out a game project. We also tell exactly what can and cannot be done with the GM8 engine, and the kind of performance drawback that can be foreseen when the platform is not fed with the right inputs.”

-HobbyPress

At $13.95 on Amazon this is probably the cheapest Game Maker focused book available today.

A review of Game Maker 8 Game Creation – Practical Tips & Techniques Vol.1 will be posted within a couple of days.

• Jacob Habgood and Mark Overmars’ follow up to the successful Game Maker’s Apprentice, titled The Game Maker’s Companion aimed at intermediate level developers is due to be released in April this year.
• In July 2009 Course Technology published Jerry Lee Ford’s book Getting Started with Game Maker: Review. Author Interview.

New Book: Game Maker 8 Game Creation – Practical Tips & Techniques Vol.1 is taken from: GameMaker Blog

The Game Maker’s Companion

Earlier in the year Jacob asked for suggestions as to what a second, more advanced, book should include.  Companion is due to be released in April 2010 and publishers APress have recently released some information about the book.

“It picks up exactly where the last book left off, advancing your game development journey with a range of awe-inspiring Game Maker projects. This time the book focuses on the diverse theme of platform games: the game genre that defined the 2D era.

• Introduces a platform game extension to Game Maker that allows sophisticated platform games to be programmed quickly and easily using drag-and-drop programming
• Shows you how to recreate classic ’90s games like Zool, using resources from the original game (and interviews with the original designer)
• Uses adventure-based platform games to teach you to create compelling storylines and convincing characters that will add enormously to the appeal of your games
• Includes the new 8.0 version of Game Maker and makes full use of its latest features, and offers inside information from the creator of Game Maker itself

What You’ll Learn:

• How to use the platform game extension to create simple platform games
• How to create more elaborate platform games using Zool as a practical example
• How to make a level editor that allows you to play and edit your games at the same time
• How to create the basic game mechanics for a pirate platform game
• How to use storylines to provide flow and a sense of purpose to the game
• How to design game characters that have depth and believability
• How to modify game artwork for your own games
• Bring together a number of example levels alongside the story
• How to create simple hierarchies (using the WiiWare game Outnumb3r3d as an example)
• How to build a thrilling, action-packed conclusion to your game”

-APress

You can pre-order the book on Amazon using the following affiliate links: US $32.57, UK £24.01. Amazon’s pre-order price guarantee means that if the price comes down prior to the book launch you pay the new lower price.

The Game Maker’s Companion: Coming April 2010 is taken from: GameMaker Blog