How To Make A Classic Arcade Game in GameMaker

Learn how to make a classic arcade game in GameMaker in this 15 minute tutorial. Then check out the other videos in the series to expand and improve your game.

Tutorial series:

[logidesigns]

This was so simple and straightforward, I can’t thank you enough for making this! I’ve officially made my very first game, and now I’m gonna customize it and add my own sprites and a menu, this was so helpful and educational, thanks again!

[strawberrylemonadelioness]

"Ship goes brr" is an amazing game name

[Aerionix]

This was nice. At first I was a bit meh because it wasn't as detailed as the original space rocks tutorial. But it wasn't meant to be. As someone's first exposure to gamemaker and something to build confidence, this is the perfect lesson to get something together and working in under a half hour. Great job man.

[Rimmerick]

If anyone else was following this guide and gets an error message after destroying a small rock, I found a fix! At 11:30 in his If Variable, he sets the variable to "instance_number(obj_rock)" which doesn't exist. Changing it to fixed it for me.

[theovertyrant]

I messed around with different software and made game with each of them but I think this is the one I'm going with, you guys have really done something incredible with visual code.

[orbiqhv]

Wow! this is the best totorial I have ever seen, it explains how to do stuff step by step and tells us why he did what he did. I hope Gamemaker make more tutorials in the futrue.

[kenzuleisti]

Thank you for this, first gamemaker tutorial I have ever completed! Very nice. Even realized I needed to copy paste that one line of code before you said I needed to.

[ivargu]

The way you use creative editing and effects in your video to draw attention to and accentuate the points you make, are so sensitively done! Masterful work, thank you!

[garrettharney]

this video rules and the tutorial and teaching style is incredibly straightforward, but not hand holdy, and encouraging. thank you!!

[RhoTrepaan]

oh wow. gml visual AND gml code at the same time 😀
and very good explanations that go with it. thanks!🙏

[sreal-iron]

for the score system 15:40:
make sure you pay attention to lower case or upper case, my files had a "Obj_game" instead of all-lower-case " obj_game" which was enough to cause a problem.
a little hint :)

[philipsheard]

Exactly what a beginner needs to get started, Thank you x

[nini]

Thanks for sharing.... these are the projects I enjoy learning with my kids.

[lazylight]

Matharoo, you make good tutorials, your editing and style makes it easy to follow.

[yejqqjz]

sorry for being agressive the first time this tutoriel is actualy pretty good and helped a lot

[IAmBlix]

this was amazing, I think I missed a bit bc I saw no way to go back, but this tutorial made it easy to figure out how to do backwards movement

[junvas]

Thank you. I haven't program since high school. Started playing games lately decided to learn game making.

[mrunknown]

Thank you so much for making this video, this must have been made after an update of some kind because back then motion add wasn't a thing, it didn't exist, the new way of coding all this is so much easier than a 5 part series like I had to watch before all these updates, this video is great.

[ShahriarahmedShobdo]

today i downloaded the GameMaker. And this was the first tutorial i've found. And made a game the day i just downloaded it! thanks for this amazing video!!

[pierregrobbelaar]

Man this was so helpful. You can be sure I will review this video if I get stuck somewhere. I am really bad with names I do understand variables tho as I am not a coder but I can read code.
Edit: I actually took it a little further and gave sound effects to my bullets. Well It's a shotgun sound but hell I am from South Africa, Shotguns is our answer for everything 😀