The procedurally generated shooter is available both on Desura and as a direct DRM-free download at the lower price (the game is normally on sale at $7.99).

IndieGameReviewer.com has perhaps the most detailed review of the game which praises the games appearance but recounts of repeated tunnel section and enemy graphics.

Probably best to stay away if flashes aren’t for you!

Koya Rift 75% Off This Week is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Dustforce, a platform game featuring an “acrobatic janitor” who must sweep up leaves, has recently become available on Steam for PC. Indie Game Mag have reported that Mac and Linux versions of the title are on the way and will be published in the near future.

Dustforce began life as a GameMaker creation by Woodley Nye and Lexie Dostal which was entered into, and subsequently won, the indiePub games’ third game making contest.

With the original game now dubbed a ‘prototype’ the creators abandoned GameMaker in favour of rewriting the game from scratch in C++ ahead of its commercial release. The new version has already received an honourable mention in the Excellence In Visual Art category of the Independent Games Festival competition.

Dustforce on Steam and soon on Mac and Linux – but not GameMaker version is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Croteam and Devolver Digital yesterday published Vlambeer’s Serious Sam: The Random Encounter on Steam.

Vlambeer were approached to create the licensed game which is one of only a handful of Game Maker created games to appear on the distribution platform. Several Game Maker games have been rewritten in a different language before subsequently appearing on Steam but very few have appeared in their Game Maker form.

According to the Vlambeer Twitter account the team has already hit their target sales figure needed to buy a Mac so they will now attempt a Mac port of the title.

Legend of Fae is at least one other Game Maker game which is available on Steam. If you are aware of any other native Game Maker games that are available please post them in the comments.

Serious Sam: The Random Encounter currently sells for £3.99 on Steam.

See also:

• Review of the game at RockPaperShotgun
• Jan Willem Nijman and Rami Ismail from Vlambeer recently gave an interview to Bret Hudson. The first part has been transcripted in indie(Magazine) issue 17, though the link to the full audio version doesn’t currently appear to work.
• Interview with Vlambeer about the game and how it came about on the Indie Games Channel
• You can win a copy of Serious Sam: The Random Encounter by retweeting this tweet from indie(Function).

Thanks to BlueMaxima for the tip!

Vlambeer’s Serious Sam: The Random Encounter Published to Steam is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Craig must tackle the 4 tribes of Boggdrop as well as dinosaurs and can team up with smarter cavemen who are able to train to improve their skills and can prioritise tasks. There are also additional game types playable alongside the survival mode featured in the original.

The original Caveman Craig game placed second in YoYo Games’ Ancient Civilization competition held back in 2008. The Parabox Games team is made up of Rhys Andrews and Tim Andrews who worked together on the original game and the Teka Teki puzzle game later published by YoYo Games on iOS and Android.

Caveman Craig 2 is due to release in late 2011 for Windows, and later Mac, Android, and iOS. You can pre-order the game for $9.99.

Caveman Craig 2 development enters “final stretch” is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Described by MoaCube as “our take on a classic fairytale in a genre that we haven’t tried before” Cinders is an upcoming visual novel beautifully illustrated in incredible detail.

Writing on TIGsource artist Gracjana Zielinska explained that the game will give players many choices and have different outcomes so that you can choose to deviate away from the traditional Cinderella story upon which the game is based.

“You can do there everything that wouldn’t normally happen (show some attitude, ignore the prince and find money to start your own business for example). We hope replayability and different scenarios will be fun.”

Cinders, created using GameMaker, is available to pre-order now at $19.95 in both PC and Mac versions. Once you pre-order you will immediately be able to access a preview build of the game.

Full release, at $22.95, is due “Summer 2011″. A 3rd development milestone passed earlier this month and you can follow development at the detailed and well-illustrated MoaCube blog.

Cinders – A Beautiful Upcoming Game Maker Game is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Optum have released Vertigo Games’ GreenTech+ as an Xbox Live Indie Game.

Get ready to save the world from the threat of global meltdown with your mighty hurricane in this action-packed arcade experience! Steer pollution into cleaning centers and watch out for the high-pressure zones. The follow up to Vertigo Games competition winning title, greenTech, this new version features sixteen levels, upgraded graphics, unlockables and a classical, relaxing soundtrack.

GreenTech+ for Xbox 360 is a nearly identical port of the YoYo Games competition 04 entry. The aim of the game is to avoid bubbles of (what I assume to be) CO2 entering designated areas of air.

On loading the game looks fine of my HD 42” TV, none of the sprites were stretched or pixelated so much it was obvious that it wasn’t the game’s style. Some of the text was hard to read due to the green on green, but I do think this was a similar case with the PC version.

As said in the features list, the game does feature some lovely “classical, relaxing” music. It kind of reminded me of when on TV you have someone dying, or some other tragic moment, and they add in some nice 1930’s music to accompany the moment.

As for the gameplay it is very much the same as the PC version. The use of the Xbox controller was much more fun than playing it on the PC. In the time I was playing it I only got up to level 8 (out of 16). I found level 7 very hard, then I think I will need to go back and “merit” – 0% CO2 – one of the tier two levels (4-8) to be able to go onto tier 3.

Overall, I think this game is a must buy if you have 80 Microsoft points ($1) spare to spend on a game. I found it very interesting playing a Game Maker game on a “regular” console for the first time, and I hope I will get to play many more in the future.

In January this year GreenTech+ became the first, and so far only, title to be published by YoYo Games as a PlayStation Mini playable on PlayStation 3 and PSPs.

The Xbox version of GreenTech+ is available to try as a free demo and the full version can be purchased for 80 Microsoft Points ($1 value).

GreenTech+ on the xBox MarketPlace

GreenTech+ Xbox Live Indie Game Out Now is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Tottenham by Theta Games

I was attracted to this game by its name and title screen which suggested it was closely linked to the London Underground transport system. Tottenham is a puzzle game in which you need to create new tunnels for tube trains to travel in under the streets of London. This must be completed in a rather dangerous and haphazard way – using explosive charges to blast unwanted rocks out of the way.

On each level you must create a complete path to a given goal so that a tube line can be installed. As the game progresses the game becomes more and more tactical as you must navigate through narrow passageways, avoid pests whilst ensuring you don’t get hit by any flying debris. This is a fun puzzle game though the sheer number of colours used to represent different types of land and creatures can get confusing – take for instance the image above which will have little meaning unless you have played through all the earlier levels!

Retrovision by Alex Aris (sound by Max Hall)
A platformer in which you must collect 16 joysticks in 60 seconds whilst avoiding Retro baddies including the Sinclair C5! It’s tricky and fast paced with baddies always appearing down the same paths enabling you to learn a viable route through the world.

Blue Box: The Last Spray [Demo] by Haris Game Studio
Off to a bad start, the clickable zones in the game menus appear far below the actual button images themselves, rendering the lower placed button useless as they could not be activated. This is an extremely unusual behaviour which I have not experienced in any other Game Maker games. It seems to be an issue with the screen resolution used, the game website states 1280×960 is required which my laptop does not support but the game still runs without any errors showing.

The game itself, which states on its website “This is not a platform games” [sic] is indeed a platform game. The blocky world and character seem in contrast the trees and flowers that adorn the levels. The jumping mechanism seems very rigid and enemies can sometimes be killed simply by walking in to them.  I found both the background drum beats and the clunking sound which plays when you collect money or points to be irritatingly distracting, so much so that I had to mute my speakers in order to actually concentrate on the game.

In short I was disappointed, the website seemed professional but the game needs far more polish before I would consider attempting to play it further, let alone spend $7.49 on the full version.

Game Maker Games April 2011: Tottenham, Retrovision, Blue Box is taken from: GameMaker Blog

From early this month the full version of Sixty Five Million And One BC has been available to download free. The game previously sold for $20.

In the dinosaur themed platformer your are tasked with preventing an asteroid hurtling towards Earth and wiping out the dinosaurs. The game was entered into YoYo Games Ancient Civilization competition back in 2008 in which it received an honourable mention.

After the competition the version uploaded to the site over 100 copies of the game were sold commercially. When 50 copies of the game had been sold its creator, snailfox, posted at the Game Maker Community about the experience of promoting and selling the game.

The game is an 18MB download and can be obtained here.

Sixty Five Million and One BC Now Free is taken from: GameMaker Blog

The games are the YoYo Games competition-winning Frozzd and You Probably Won’t Make It, both of which are freely available on PC.

You Probably Won’t Make It is the most successful of the two titles having been featured by Apple twice and accounting for over 90% of the two titles revenue.

Both games, which sell for $0.99 in the Mac App Store, are published by Vetra Games using GameMaker for Mac.

Frozzd – Mac App Store
You Probably Won’t Make It – Mac App Store

Jesse Venbrux’s Game Maker Games Earn $1500 on Mac is taken from: GameMaker Blog

In order to do this, I went to the YoYo Games site to find a cross section of zombie games to play, and hopefully find some good ones. As I visited the site, one thing hit me immediately – the sheer number of zombie games! A quick search for ‘zombies’ turned up 34 pages of results – compared with only 18 pages for ‘aliens’.

With all these zombie games there’s only one presented in the YoYo Games spotlight – designed to attract attention to great or unique games for people to play. Okay, onto the first game!

Zombies by Jimmynator

What better place to start than with the spotlight game? ‘Zombies’ is created by Jimmynator, and I was quite confident to see a quality game with some unique elements, befitting its spotlight position. The screenshots look decent and the game apparently supports 2 players, which sounds fun. From previous experience, multiplayer would be pretty cool and somewhat innovative for a Game Maker game.

As the introduction rolls I’m pretty impressed as it looks a bit professional and cool. However, that feeling is quickly dashed by a show_message popping up. It asks me for my name and I stare at it for a second. Usually spotlight games are of high quality, but using a show_message is commonly criticised for being lazy. It doesn’t even have a custom skin. Is this really the first experience you want your players to receive?

Moving on, I note the number of options on the main menu, seeing that it has trophies and statistics, which is good. I start up the game proper and am instantly somewhat deflated. The graphics are full of gradient usage and are very generic and dull. The room I’m standing in is massive and yet empty of pretty much anything. There are wooden blocks stationed about the place that zombies attempt to break into. Why they aren’t windows I have no idea. I am also presented with no help, which is a little annoying.

It takes a while to figure out two things: reload is space, for no reason, and that you can shoot through the wood blocks without damaging them. Both of these are pretty important but aren’t explained. There’s no way to change the key bindings, either. This is pretty frustrating.

But it doesn’t stop there – there’s a sound that loops every 4 seconds or so that is possibly the most annoying sound effect created by mankind. I assume it’s a zombie but I can only guess it’s ripped from something, as within it I can also hear a police siren. To reiterate: a police siren goes off every 4 seconds the game lasts for. Way to make your game playable.

With all that said, from a mechanics point of view, the difficulty is solid. I felt somewhat challenged and this gradually built up. The speed zombies are a little fast for what they are, however.

The biggest flaw in the game is how difficult some of the mechanics are to grasp – for example, there’s a turret you can place which greatly helps you in killing the zombies. But, there’s no on screen feedback that you can place it. You just have to dig into the help file (which very few players will do) to learn you can press ‘t’ for a turret. How about a symbol on the screen next to the ammo, which could show you had a turret to place down. Also, nowhere in the help file or games does it say how you can buy weapons. Want to know what bizarre key it is? It’s left control.

Remember earlier how I said the difficulty was OK? It’s broken by about the 5th level. You enter a room with a turret in, and you never have to leave. In fact opening more doors is worse, because it lets more enemies in. The turret is the best weapon in the game. It has no ammo, no overheat problems. Nothing. You can shoot in any direction at a high rate of fire. So the player feels no desire to explore or find more content, gradually build up their weapons to fight the hardest enemies. They can just sit in a room.

The path finding is equally dreadful. Zombies continually run up and down the walls outside the building while you stand around inside, doing nothing. It’s also worth pointing out how big and at the same time, how empty the building you’re in is. What the hell was it before the zombies came anyway?

I die, and notice there’s a custom skin for the show_message now – why wasn’t that there when it asked me for my name?

I try playing another level, but it’s almost identical to the first one, except the room now has a bed in it. The trophies are very samey, the stats are OK but don’t record much and it turns out the 2 player is split screen, which I imagine is fun if you enjoy the actual game, which I don’t.

The online high score system doesn’t seem to be working either.

After a search I found the game topic at the GMC.  It’s quite remarkable. The author gets extremely annoyed when people complain about the control system, and this happens several times. However, they don’t try and fix this within the game, instead they get kind of angry.

I started this article to learn more about Zombie Top Down Shooter (ZTDS) games. So what have I learnt from ‘Zombies’? Keep tight control of balancing. Make sure your core game is solid before adding other features like trophies and high score systems (that don’t work). The game features no story and no information on your character, which hurts the enjoyment of the game. The game does feature some special zombies that make you slightly change your tactics, which is good.

The more I play this game, the more I feel drained. This is the best ZTDS? It is the spotlight overall. While the game on YoYo is rated 4 stars I’d probably give it 2 stars. Let’s move on to the next game.

Zombie Terrorists by cocoreysa

I think this is the kind of game people think of when they see “ZTDS” – broken and unpolished. It has a lot of the flaws that ‘Zombies’ did, but manages to do even worse. By the way if you’re wondering about the game, I believe it’s a reference to a common rumour that was around before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s launch – that it would contain a zombie mode. But because Infinity Ward’s games took place in the modern day, the Nazis would be replaced by terrorists. This was later proven to be absolute nonsense.

The first thing that I noted was the UI, which takes up about a 1/3 of the screen. This is further hampered by the fact that the screen size is so small, which makes it difficult to see things coming, and react to them.

When starting the game there are some options which you can choose from, but none of them have any explanation as to what they do. They all seem to be directly ripped from Call of Duty, as well. For example, kill streaks? How would that work? Once you die, you finish the game, so getting 1,435 kills in a row isn’t really that skilful.

The other very noticeable bit of the game is that zombies appear from thin air, sometimes right in front of you. They also disappear into thin air when the arbitrary ‘round’ is over. This is confusing and odd. Why do this? It has no advantage over any other spawning system, and just makes it look unprofessional.

There are a lot of options (pistol only, kill streaks etc.) but the core game is frustrating, bizarre and extremely repetitive. Zombies appear out of thin air, and disappear again when the ‘round’ is over.

Hitting the escape key immediately exits the game, which is annoying when I want to pause it or just go back to the menu.

A plus point is that the game features 5 different maps to play, but there’s no difference in gameplay between them. The ‘city’ map is especially poor – the flickering street lights strained my eyes, and they shone through buildings for no reason. Some maps feature buildings which are 2D and you can enter, whereas others feature ones which were ‘2.5D’ and you couldn’t enter, which was annoying.

There is limb damage in terrorist zombies, but it’s only aesthetic. So if you blow their legs off, zombies still run at the same pace, which is ridiculous. The muzzle effect is a Game Maker standard effect, which looks awful. The path finding is even worse than ‘Zombies’. The fog makes it difficult to see a lot of the game because it covers everything up.

So what was there to learn from Terrorists Zombies? Well, like ‘Zombies’ it includes relatively arcade-like style gameplay. The zombies are easy to kill and there’s lots of blood and gore. In my WIP game zombies require many more shots to take down. Upon playing these, I’m loathe to say that they have it better. It’s just more fun to kill more zombies with fewer shots to each. In addition, I need to make sure the screen is large enough to see things coming, and make sure zombies don’t just appear from nowhere.

This is honestly a very poor game, and it shocks me that it has been rated 4 stars. Is this really all it takes to make a game which is considered popular by the YoYo Community? I want to strive to make something a lot better.

Blood Bath 2 Unlucky by petrik09

To be honest I wasn’t expecting much after the disasters that had come before, but Wow!  As I dropped into the first level of this game I realised I was having fun!

The graphics are 3D, but it’s still done in a top down-ish style. The 3D has animations, lighting and different models for different weapons. This really adds to the appeal of the game and makes it instantly more interesting and attractive.

Weapons are bought, and the shop type system is easily accessible at the top of the screen. The balancing on the weapons is good, and each one feels distinctly different in handling.

At the start of the level it directed me towards some help, where I actually learnt about the game, as opposed to some of the other games where the help is non-existent.

The sight of customization options lifted my heart, and I wasn’t disappointed. There are a couple of attachments and equipment which can be purchased. These are great, they easily add depth and advancement to the game. It helps to give the player some amount of choice as well – buy the attachment for this gun or to save up for another. I’d like to see this system extended, because at the moment you can get the final weapon quite early on.

There are some barrels to explode, which means you can actually interact with the environment in this game, which is a really good start. This could be expanded – having a bunch of explosive barrels doesn’t really make sense in a park.

The shooting system is enjoyable, despite a low number of guns. The impact of your weapon feels good, and there’s a bit of limb damage – occasionally you’ll only blow their heads off. The feel of a shooting system is vital in a shooting game. This is why many people argue about whether they prefer Killzone over Call of Duty – in Killzone the controls are quite ‘floaty’ but this allows for more graphical effects, and is less demanding on new players. However, Call of Duty’s system is very precise.

The sound was good. It was used minimally, and added to the game well. The weapon effects sounded excellent, and the sound definitely added to the games appeal.

Now, the game isn’t perfect – the graphics need a bit of tune up as some of the models look poor, for example, the zombie model could have been improved. It could use a few more guns and equipment for extra variety. I wonder about the replayability – there are three maps, but they’re all very similar. In addition it’s tough to see where your money is, which causes problems when you’re trying to buy things.

It honestly shocks me this is rated 4 stars, the same as the previous game. In this case I think it’s worth 3.5 stars, but some extra content could easily boost this up to a 4.

As I play this game, my faith in the ZTDS genre is restored. The addition of 3D graphics clearly boosts the enjoyment of the game. But it’s not just about graphics – easily accessible customization, clear help files, good difficulty. The solid foundations are here for a fantastic game, and I can see that potential clearly shining through.

Wrap Up

After playing those games I’ve seen the highs and lows of the ZTDS genre. But the elements I want to include in my zombie game clearly shine through:

Polish, polish and then polish some more. I had always considered this before, but you never polish enough. What do I mean by this? Play your game. Is that piece of the UI slightly too big? Make it smaller. Zombies slightly too hard? Weaken their attacks or the amount of them. It’s easy to think ‘That’s fine’ or ‘Nobody will see that’. But people will, and they’ll appreciate the extra effort you go to improve it.

Graphics. You might get the impression that I only like 3D graphics from this article. It’s not true. But 2.5D or 3D systems add so much more to immersive nature of the game. If you do 2D graphics, then great, I won’t criticize you for it. Just make sure the effects are good and that you get a proper artist or learn from some tutorials. Just ask in the Art forum of the GMC.

Mechanics. Zombies are being used as a crutch for poor game design. By all means use zombies, but think about previous systems. Don’t copy from World at War. Think about why World at War was fun and apply those concepts. Special zombies add a lot to gameplay, so think carefully about including them.

Sound. Use sound minimally, don’t try and force it on players. Don’t loop music or sound effects, and if you have a zombie sound effect for death, try including a couple of slightly different ones instead of just one. Allow sound volume to be lowered or turned off completely.

This post was written by Sondar. You can follow me on Twitter or see my website and blog. I’m working on more articles and some tutorials, so favourite it and check back regularly!

An exploration of Game Maker Zombie Top Down Shooter Games is taken from: GameMaker Blog