After you download Game Maker for free pressing the button below, the first step you have to do is to create your sprites. These are represented by any object in the room: characters, trees, monsters, tiles (squares with grass, rock, wood, stone:  textures like for the ground in the left piucture) etc.

 

Step 1

 

Right-click on "Sprites" from the left side menu. Choose "Create Sprite" - "Load Sprite" - "Sprites" - " Maze-Platform" and choose the sprite you want, this is a tutorial for a catch game like "Apple Catch" or "Run Burger, Run" but you can use anything you want. Name the sprite "Spr_Apple" for example and go to the second step.

 

Step 2

 

Right-click on "Objects" - "Create Object" .Name the object "Obj_Apple". Click on the little icon showing a piece of paper and choose the sprite that you created earlier. Make sure that both "Visible" and "Solid" boxes are ticked. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3

 

Right-click on "Rooms" - "Create Room" . Here you will have a menu with backgrounds, views, objects, settings and tiles. As long as objects is pressed, you can put your objects in the room. All you have to do is just click in the place where you want it to be. If you want to add objects, make more and choose them from the list that pops up when clicking in the area that I highlighted with yellow. 

 

Based on the same steps, create a wall and put walls on all edges of the room and then create some more walls as an obstacle like in the picture below. If you want to delete an object, right-click and delete, if you want  to delete more, right-click hold + shift, if you want to delete all, click the third symbol from the menu above the room (the one that shows an empty page and says "Clear all instances in the room") 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 4

 

Press on the apple object and click "Create Event". Choose "Create" near the lightbulb symbol . In the box from the right you are going to drag pieces of code from the right side menu. Don't worry, you will hardly type some code later, for now everything is in easy to recognise symbols.

 

Click and hold on the red "Move Fixed" sign under the "Move" section, drag it to the left and drop it into the empty box. Click on all the arrows but not the square in the middle (that makes it stop) and choose the speed of 3. Now if you press on the green triangle on top saying "Run the game" you will see that the apple starts moving but goes through the walls even though we have selected it to be solid and that it's moving rather slowly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add another event, Choose "Collision" near the two arrows that collide. A menu with your objects will appear. Drag the "Bounce" sign under the "Jump" section. Make it bounce precisely against all solid objects, press ok. This will make the apple bounce against the walls instead of going through them.

 

Step 5

 

Now add as event "Mouse" - "Left Button" drag another "Move Fixed" symbol and select all the arrows but this time make the speed 0.5 and relative. This will make the apple add 0.5 to it's speed every time it's clicked on. Also here add "Jump to random" and click ok without changing anything. This will make the apple jump in unexpected corners of the room when clicking it.

 

You can add more apples in the room and make an escape for them to make the game more challenging but we also need something dangerous.

 

Step 6

 

Create a new sprite, a bomb or something dangerous and make an object for it. Add a "Create" event and drag a "Move Fixed" symbol. Click on all the arrows and make its speed 3, not relative. 

 

Create another event, this time a collision with the wall then drag from "Main 1" the recycle bin symbol which signifyes "Destroy Instance". This will make your bomb disappear when hitting the wall. You can also duplicate the event but make it a collision with the apple, then drag a second "Destroy Instance" symbol but make it apply to the apple.

 

Step 7

 

Now let's make lives and a score! Create two new objects with no sprite in them named "Obj_Score" and "Obj_Lives".  If you want to have images instead of numbers create a new sprite with  the shape you want (eg hearts).

 

For the lives, create a "Draw" event then go to "Score" and choose "Draw Lives" to make the score appear as a number (in this case you also need to add from "Draw" symbol menu, "Set Color" where you can set the style of the writing) or "Draw Life Images" (in this case you have to put x=32 and y=0 and select the sprite chosen). 

 

 

For the score, create a "Draw" event then go to "Score" and drag the symbol "Draw Score" then add a "Set Color" symbol.

 

The most important thing is to NOT forget to put these two objects in the room otherwise it won't work! Put them in the left upper corner one after another.

 

Now go to the apple object and in the "Create" event also add a "Set Lives" symbol from the "Score" menu and set them to five. Then go to the "Mouse" event and add there "Set Score" choose 10 (as 10 points for every time you catch the apple) and make it relative.

 

Then go to the bomb object and create a "Mouse" - "Left" event where you will add another "Set Score" but put more points and also make relative. Also at the bomb object, in the collision event with the apple add a "Set Lives" symbol and set lives to -1 relative. You can do the same thing for the collision with the wall.

 

Now a last thing to do is to go to the lives object and drag the "Test Lives" symbol. Choose "0" and "equal to", click ok and then drag "Display Message" and choose an appropriate message such as "You are dead! HAHAHA!" also drag the symbols "Show Highscore" and "Restart Game" which is under "main 2".

 

Step 8

 

Create a nice starting page and create a new background with it. Create a new room and choose the background created. Click and drag the room on top of the old one so that when you start the game the image with the menu to be the first one to be seen.

 

Create sprites and objects for "Play", "Quit", "Load" and "Info" buttons which you will also find in the Game Maker resource pack.

 

Go and create "Mouse" - "Left" events for each one of the object buttons then add the following for each other:

 

To the Obj_Play drop the "Go to next room" symbol. 

 

            Obj_Info and Quit drop the "Show Highscore" symbol.

 

            Obj_Load drp the symbol "Restart Game".

 

Now all you have to do is put the Play and Info buttons in the first room and Quit and Load buttons in the second and start playing!