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Behold the aspiring repository for all there is to know about Recreational Software Designs' Game-Maker, the original game creation system for MS-DOS. Read of its use, its users, its surrounding culture, and -- of course -- the games themselves!
The Game-Maker Archive is not for profit; just for promulgation. Please feel free to contribute. Anything you can add or enhance, however incidental it may seem, will just increase the wealth of knowledge about RSD Game-Maker. In updating, do use some common sense and courtesy; this wiki is for everyone, not just you or me. Otherwise, kick around. Break the place in.
Join the community!
Look up in the far-right corner to sign up, and contribute to the knowledge base. You can browse a list of other contributors, including several Game-Maker users past and present, or follow current Game-Maker events on Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus.
Other destinations include reddit, YouTube, and Wikipedia. For a (very incomplete) list of user created games, you can also visit MobyGames, the Internet's comprehensive game database.
Where to begin?
How do you browse an archive of this scale? Well, here are some points of entry. You can begin by reading about the games -- either our featured games, a list of, or our large backlog of work-in-progress listings. Typically on each game page you can read a review, plus a games's storyline, credits, and instructions (if available). You can view screenshots, download maps, and the games themselves. In most cases an online, JAVA-emulated version of the game is available.
If you find a game that you enjoy, try exploring its author's -- both of other Game-Maker games and, in many cases, the author's later design career. You can also browse games by genre or theme, or look through related design tools or sound and image resources.
- Featured games (the best of the bunch)
- Known Game-Maker games (a work in progress)
- Known Game-Maker artists (a work in progress)
- Pending articles (they're coming...)
Game playing tips
To play Game-Maker games with full compatibility under Win2K and higher, use a DOSBox frontend such as D-Fend Reloaded. Just drop the games in, turn the CPU cycles up to 16,000, and play.
For Linux or Mac OS X, try DBGL: DOSBox Game Launcher. Users with condensed keyboards may want to look into utilities like Keyboard Remapper or KeyRemap4MacBook.
