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First look at GameMaker on Linux

2026-10-01 Thu ⏱ 2 hr 16 min tsodingdaily

Tsoding tries GameMaker for the first time, on its Linux beta. Getting a blank game to run takes an hour of fighting packaging and dependencies. Once it runs, he is won over by the editor: in under an hour, with almost no code, he builds a sprite that moves, flips, squashes, plays sounds and spawns explosions. His verdict is that the UX is more intuitive than Godot and he would recommend it to beginners on Windows, but not yet on Linux. He is also wary of Opera's ownership.

Installation pain

  • The Linux beta ships as a .deb, which he unpacks by hand. Inside is a .NET (PE32+) app that also bundles its own Node.js. He contrasts this with Godot's single static executable, which is his "favourite genre" of application.
  • First launch fails with "unable to access vital system folders". A /tmp/GameMaker directory created earlier by his other Linux user blocks this one. He calls it a classic Windows-first assumption, also seen with Jai's shared-memory objects.
  • Running even an empty game needs linuxdeploy, appimagetool and the ~700 MB (2.7 GB unpacked) Steam runtime, set up manually from a help article. Every debug run builds an AppImage. He finds it bizarre that you have to package the game for deployment just to test it.
  • Settings UI complaints: a preferences window with a huge number of options and no search, a confusing tree whose clicks don't update the right-hand pane, and poor font rendering.
  • The project templates promote Opera GX ("game strip" mode), and the company behind GameMaker (YoYo Games) has been owned by Opera since 2021.

The editor clicks

  • Once a game runs, the model makes sense. A project is a canvas of assets: sprites, sounds, objects, scripts and rooms. Objects have sprites and event handlers (create, key down, key pressed, key up, ...). Rooms work as level editors where you place object instances, and you can double-click an instance to jump straight to its object.
  • Sprites support animation frames, configurable origins and automatic collision masks. An animated GIF imports straight into a sprite.
  • GML Code is an ordinary C-style imperative language with autocomplete (it even has HTML5 helpers like url_get_domain). The first line he writes is =your_mom = 69=.
  • GML Visual is a no-code block editor. Using it he wires up key-pressed sounds, movement with direction in degrees and speed, sprite flipping via image_xscale, a squash on "fart" via image_yscale (with a "relative" toggle), reusable scripts, and instance_create spawning an explosion object.
  • Rough edges: only some audio formats are accepted (no FLAC, so he converts with ffmpeg), there is no built-in audio trimming, compiling is slow, and copy-paste is the only way to reuse event logic across many keys.

On visual programming

He thinks block languages solve an imaginary problem. Syntax is the easy part of programming, like the Cyrillic alphabet is the easy part of Russian. At real complexity, diagrams turn into spaghetti, and text is still the densest way to represent logic. The value he does see is psychological: blocks get beginners past their fear of syntax. He compares it to modding Warcraft 3 at 16.

He also endorses the critique that engines get it backwards by attaching code to objects, when code should be what creates the world.

Business model and verdict

  • Free for non-commercial use and publishing to Opera's GX.games. Releasing on other platforms or commercially needs a paid tier. He guesses Opera takes a cut of GX.games sales.
  • 3D support is rudimentary (perspective camera and billboards).
  • Verdict: the installation is unacceptable but forgivable for a beta. The overall experience is "insanely intuitive" without tutorials, better than Godot, and he understands why beginners choose it. He worries the Opera upselling will get worse over 5–10 years.
  • Possible future streams: Unity, Unreal, older engines (GoldSrc/Source, Warcraft 3 editor) and Roblox's Luau.
  • Along the way he demos his own Ada game, Eepers, which is the source of his signature checkpoint sound.