GameMaker - Asteroid

In the fall of 2016, I set out to find a tool that could be used to teach kids and young people the basics of programming through game creation. I've always felt that it can be difficult and sometimes even boring, to go through all the fundamentals of programming before you ever get to make something fun. Personally, I enjoy getting visual feedback with colors, figures, and movement on screen, rather than just staring at "bits and bytes." I also strongly believe in the learn by doing approach. For beginners, especially kids and teens, being able to create something visual and interactive makes the process both more engaging and motivating.

My idea was simple: start by learning how to create games, and let the programming concepts naturally follow along the way. To find the right tool, I listed some criteria:

1. Easy to use with minimal system requirements
2. Allows actual coding (not just drag & drop)
3. Comes with solid documentation and tutorials
4. Runs on multiple platforms (nice-to-have)
5. Supports both 2D and 3D (nice-to-have)
6. Free to use

After some research, I decided to give Game Maker Studio a try. For my experiment, I recreated the classic Asteroids game, this time with almost no programming. In fact, the whole project ended up with just 16 lines of code, mainly because I couldn't figure out how to display a variable or add a high score using the drag-and-drop features.

My conclusion from this experiment: yes, it's absolutely possible for non-programmers to create a playable game in GameMaker Studio without writing a single line of code.