Game Development – Beginners Tutorial Series

Over the coming weeks and months, we will explore how to build a simple 2D Top-Down Space Shooter computer game using the popular game development engine called GameMaker Studio.

You will learn how to create sprites, learn to code to make your player move around a game environment, code spawning enemies, enemy collisions, making the player shoot, creating a heads-up display with lives, score and health and much more.

We hope you enjoy this beginner game development series. Each tutorial is listed below for ease of navigation. If you have any questions or comments put them into the comments section of the relevant post.

Thank you and good luck to all of you budding game designers  – Tomas.

The following is a link to a zip file of assets you can use for free to build your game

Download Spaceshooter Assets

List of Game Development Beginners Tutorials –

* from Tutorial 9 onwards is for site members only. However, it is free to join here

1. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 1 – Creating a Game in Game Maker Studio 2
2. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 2 – Creating a Player Sprite in Game Maker Studio 2
3. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 3 – Creating a Player Object, Movement & Animation
4. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 4 – Creating a Game Room with a moving background
5. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 5 – Making your player shoot
6. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 6 – Adding sounds to your game
7. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 7 – Coding Enemy Object with movement
8. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 8 – Enemy Shooting
9. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 9 – Automatically spawning enemies
10. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 10 – Collision and Health Setup
11. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 11 – Create an End Screen
12. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 12 – Create an Start Screen
13. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 13 – Create a Player Health Bar
14. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 14 – Create a Light Effect
15. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 15 – Create Score for your game
16. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 16 – Create a room with a view
17. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 17 – Create Particle Effects
18. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 18 – Keep score between rooms
19. Beginners Game Design Tutorial 19 – Create enemy waves

If you prefer to follow a video series, we highly recommend the following course developed by HeartBeast Studios:

Be a Game maker in GameMaker Studio 2 (affiliate link)