"GameMaker Studio" ("GameMaker" in this tutorial) is a complete Integrated Environment to develop games. Initially it was conceived to allow novices to create simple games without much programming knowledge. To satisfy this requirement, it offered several technologies to allow to compose visually the equivalent of a computer program. Although, if necessary developers could write code and use a programming language similar to C but with some ideas taken from javascript. This results in a language easy enough to be used by novices.

 The main features are:

• Integrated. All or most stages of the game development can be done with built-in tools. For the most part, It doesn't need help from external software.
• It has its own language (Game Maker Language or GML)  which is not unfamiliar to programers used to C, Javascript, etc. and is tightly integrated with the game engine and development environment.
• For simple games no code is needed. Game Maker allows the developer to use "DnD" Drag and Drop Programming as an alternative to the use of GML
• Games can be created for most operative systems and games platforms. And integration with digital distribution platforms is also included.
• Specially suitable for several types of games, but can be adapted to many additional genres with some extra work.

Game maker exceels in the simplicity and usefulness in creating platform games and shoot'em up games. But other types of games can also be created.

In platform games, a character moves in a 2-dimensional world gathering objects, avoiding obstacles and destroying enemies. A well known example is Mario Bros

Shoot Them up games. In this game the player is continuously advancing over a map, either flying or walking and additionally he can reach different points of the screen . Enemies appear in the "ahead" direction of the player, who has to avoid or  kill those enemies. A eternal example is "Space invaders"