So many of us like to create, customize, or at least personalize our game experience. In the 80’s we had tools like Pinball Construction Set and Adventure Construction Set. We created our own games, saved them to a diskette, and through the cutting edge tech of floppynet/sneakernet, shared them with friends. In the late 90’s, mods and “total conversions” (TCs) were very popular, but Klik-n-Play also appeared and became a popular “game maker” program. Kliktopia.org is one of several examples of the Klik community still thriving to this day, 25 years later.
This list is going to focus on tools from 2000 to the present. With each review, I will attempt to make a functioning (no promises of it being good or fun) game.
- Raycasting Gamemaker 5.31 – a Wolf3D-style game creation tool
- The 3D Gamemaker – the “just click to create” slogan wasn’t joking!
- Cyberix3D – a free, online 3D gamemaker
- sok-stories – a fun and accessible way to make, play and share games.
I grade each app based on four categories:
- Ease of Use – Can I jump right in, or is manual necessary? Is it intuitive? What is the learning curve?
- Features – Does it have plenty of knobs and levers? How many options do I have?
- Custom asset support – Can I import my own assets? How easy is importing?
- Originative – Do the creations seem diverse and different, or does it shovel out cookie-cutter games?
Obviously, review scores are subjective. To that, I encourage readers to post their own feedback, comments, and reviews.