GameMaker Awards 2024: Winners Revealed
The GameMaker Awards were once again a showcase of some incredible GameMaker creations. This year felt like the most stacked and close vote in the history of the competition, it was impossible to call and kept changing over the 2 weeks. Over 10,000 votes were cast!
Now… We’re delighted to announce your winners:
- Best Game: Picayune Dreams - Stepford
- Most Anticipated Game: ANTONBLAST - Summitsphere
- Best Tool: GameMaker's Testing Library - DAndrëwBox
GameMaker Awards 2024 ‘Best Game’ Winner: Picayune Dreams
This year’s winner of the coveted ‘Best Game’ award is the stunning and bizarre Picayune Dreams!
Picayune Dreams is a roguelike blend of bullet heaven horde survival, and bullet hell gameplay. Adrift across the endless void, you must fend off thousands of nightmarish and otherwordly creatures.
“If you had told me I'd be in the position I am today two years ago, I would not have believed you. I'm surrounded by such awesome people and have had opportunities that seemed impossible to me,” said Picayune Dreams developer, Stepford, adding: "I had tried other game engines but Gamemaker's lenient programming meant that I could create things while stum bling - my life would be entirely different if it wasn't for the idiot proofing of the program! Picayune Dreams, as a whole, was the hardest thing I have ever done and the fact that there are so many people out there who like what I do is such a surreal, validating feeling, and it makes me want to do it all over again.”
Victory in this category is never easy and this year’s shortlist for Best Game featured some of the greatest indie releases of the year, including:
- Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore - Seedy Eye Software
- Isles of Sea and Sky - Jason Newman, Cicada Games
- Athenian Rhapsody - Nico Papalia
- The Bunny Graveyard - Pichon Games
GameMaker Awards 2024 ‘Most Anticipated’ Winner: ANTONBLAST
Your ‘Most Anticipated’ winner was the fast-paced explosive action platformer, ANTONBLAST from Summitsphere!
Play as the enraged Dynamite Anton (or his cranked-out coworker Annie) and use your Mighty F’n Hammer to demolish bizarre worlds, tussle with screen-filling bosses, and steal your Spirits back from Satan!
“I've been using GameMaker all the way back since I started making games in 2007 with Game Maker 6.1. Working with an engine that had no preconceptions about my background as a developer enabled me to chase my dreams in a way no other program could give me, and through that I met many of my best friends who I would go on to form Summitsphere with. It would be no exaggeration to say that GameMaker permanently altered the course of my life,” said Tony Grayson, Studio Head at Summitsphere, adding: “ANTONBLAST winning the ‘Most Anticipated Game’ award is nothing short of a huge honor for our team, and incredibly surreal for myself especially, having used the program for 17 years. On behalf of all of us at Summitsphere: Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Winning against some very strong competition from another amazing shortlist, which featured:
- Deadlock Station - Luxorix Games
- Fishbowl - imissmyfriends
- Keylocker | Turn Based Cyberpunk Action - Moonana
- Windswept - WeatherFell
GameMaker Awards 2024 ‘Best Tool’ Winner: GameMaker's Testing Library
New for 2024 was the ‘Best Tool’ award, which was claimed by GameMaker's Testing Library from developer DAndrëwBox.
GameMaker’s Testing Library is an open-source testing framework for GameMaker libraries, extensions and (hopefully) prefabs, with a focus on simplicity and ease of use.
“I'm genuinely surprised that I've won, I didn't expect it, especially considering that many of the other developers in the shortlist are people whose work I really admire. It's crazy to me that over the past few years, all the tools and libraries I've developed didn't start as ideas to public release but have been primarily created inside the project file of my main game (Mainasutto: I'm not Alone) for my own usage, and then I've since just adapted them for public release so others can benefit from it. I've been working with GameMaker since I was about 10 years old, in the 'GameMaker 8' era, and it feels incredibly fulfilling to now contribute to the same community that first taught me the world of game development and coding.” commented DAndrëwBox, creator of GameMaker’s Testing Library.
The other finalists for the ‘Best Tool’ are all worth your investigation:
- GMRoomLoader - Gleb Tsereteli
- Post-Processing FX - FoxyOfJungle
- SnowState - Sohom Sahaun
- SynthEngine - Topher Anselmo
Thank you to everyone who submitted their games and all those who voted. We’ll see you next year!
Happy GameMaking!
