YoYo Games' Game Maker for Mac finally arrives

YoYo Games, creators of the popular Game Maker platform for Windows, have finally brought their game creation engine to the Mac. Game Maker for Mac is a pro version of Game Maker 7 (Windows is already up to GameMaker 8) and it's got all the features of the Windows version of GM7.

From the YoYo Games blog, here are some of the perks of Game Maker for Mac:

• Remote update mechanism (with regular updates for bug fixes and new features).
• Full Drag and Drop included.
• Full GML scripting.
• Extension mechanism to incorporate 3rd party libraries – (need to be Mac specific extensions, will not run Windows.).
• Room Editor
• Sprite Editor
• Path Editor
• Create standalone games that you can share with friends.

It's not all sunshine and kittens, though: there's no upgrade path from Windows to Mac, so your Windows license key won't work for the Mac version of Game Maker. Also, the Mac version is starting one step behind Windows, so it can't open your Windows GM8 files... And there have been a lot of bugs and problems with slow framerates reported. I recommend reading the comments thread on YoYo Games' post to see what you're getting into.

Tags: game maker, GameMaker, gm7, mac, yoyogames