Do It Yourself With The Humble GameMaker Bundle
DIY
We may have, at times, given you the impression that all video games are made by a many-armed, many-faced god named Ian Video Games. You probably imagined a deity like a Bayonetta boss or something. We may have misled you. Just a tad. In truth, video games are made by people. Simply people, like you or I. And you or I could even make games ourselves. Not from dust either - from electricity, using computers.
GameMaker is fine software for making games and right now it's mega-cheap too. Packed into the pay-what-you-want Humble GameMaker Bundle is a haul of game-making software plus actual games and source code too. (Infinite arms not included.)
I've found GameMaker a friendly introduction to making things, having fiddled with a few odds and ends myself, but it is also the foundation of some proper great games. These include Hotline Miami, Hyper Light Drifter, the original Spelunky, Nidhogg, Nuclear Throne, Gunpoint, Downwell, Undertale, Cook Serve Delicious, and many other things you likely wouldn't have known were made in GameMaker. Good stuff!
This bundle's core is obviously GameMaker itself, with GameMaker: Studio's Professional Edition and a load of platform modules split across the tiers. Source code to several games is included too, so you can see how they're put together.
It's the usual Humble Bundle approach. Paying anything will get you GameMaker: Studio Pro, the games Uncanny Valley, Ink, Shep Hard, and Angry Chicken: Egg Madness, plus source code for two games.
Pay more than the average price ($12.15/£9.10 as I write this) to add GameMaker's HTML5 module for exporting webgames, the games Home, Solstice, and Galactic Missile Defense, plus more source code for more.
Last, pay at least $15 (£11.23-ish) to also get Android, iOS, and Windows UWP modules, along with the game Flop Rocket, and even more games' source code.
That's all pretty great! A few decent games and a dandy tool. GameMaker: Studio does have a limited free version but this is hardly expensive.
What to do once you have GameMaker? Gunpoint creator Tom Francis has made a video tutorial series titled 'Make A Game With No Experience', which is what he'd done.