The top 14 game engines: GameMaker

Company: YoYo Games
Platforms: Android, Browser, iOS, Mac, PC, Windows Phone
Used in: Hotline Miami, Mr Karoshi, Reflexions, Spelunky
www.yoyogames.com

Possibly the engine with the lowest entry requirements in this year’s round-up, GameMaker was created with people looking to get into games development in mind.

YoYo Games CTO Russell Kay says GameMaker’s greatest strengths are its simplicity and accessibility, rapid prototyping and integration with multiple monetisation solutions.

Today, GameMaker comes in four flavours – a free version and tiered paid-for versions – and supports a spread of platforms including Windows 8, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, HTML5 and more.

In order to open up further opportunities for developers, YoYo Games plans to support Ubuntu Linux, GPU vertex and fragment shaders and a new native compiler based on the LLVM library.

“We are seeing a greater acceptance among developers of the utility of game engines and a willingness to use tools that are not created in-house,” says Kay.

“This dynamic brings more creative energy to the surface in game design and business models. We are all looking forward to see what our customers do with our product next.”

You can view all of the top 14 game engine profiles as they are published here.