Installation Guide

GameMaker is designed for use on macOS and Windows desktop computers.

You can download the GameMaker installer on the GameMaker Website and install it. Once installed, the first time you run GameMaker you may be prompted to update before being able to use the product. You will be shown the Runtime Modules Dialog which allows you to select the runtime modules that you'd like to install.

After any updates have been installed, you will be able to use the IDE, and optionally log in (required for creating executables).

It is worth noting that - depending on the licence type that you have - you may be required to install additional components or follow additional steps to set up and use GameMaker for specific platforms. For full information on what each platform requires, please see this article on the GameMaker Helpdesk: Required SDKs.

Stable, Beta and LTS

The version you download from the Download page should be the current Stable version of GameMaker. The page also has a "Beta" version available which is used to showcase or test new functionality before it goes into a final stable build, as well as an "LTS" version that gets only bug fixes.

The full version details are as follows:

Runtime Modules Dialog

Every runtime in GameMaker consists of a set of modules. As you might not need all of them on your system you can select which ones to download and install, for those cases where you e.g. are working on a machine with a limited amount of disk space or have a slow internet connection.

NOTE This dialog will always be shown to you the first time you install any version of GameMaker starting with 2022.11. The default setting is to remember your choices and not show the dialog again in the future, but you can set the Remember last selection of modules option in the Runtime Feeds Preferences to "Show Message" to make the dialog show again each time.

Before installing a new runtime you will then be shown this dialog: 

Checking the "Remember Selection" checkbox in this dialog will ensure you don't see it again. The selection of modules you choose here will then also be used when installing new runtimes and the Remember last selection of modules option will be set to "OK".

The above is the default selection of modules on Windows. The base module and the module for the OS that you're currently developing on are always included. They are the minimum required modules for GameMaker to be able to build your game. All other modules are optional.

You can quickly change this by clicking the Required only button: 

If you want to download and install the full list of modules that is available then you can click "Select All" instead: 

Note that, depending on the selected modules, downloading and installing a runtime can take a few minutes, but you can see a progress bar for the download at the top right of the IDE:

Installing a Runtime