Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Dec 2, 2021

  Extremely powerful tool. If you tried Game Maker and got put-off by learning their language, this program is basically Game Maker but with a much more user friendly drag and drop system. It's a little light on online tutorials at the moment but the built-in tutorial is fantastic, and it's super easy to pick up. As someone who's worked in RPG Maker, GZDoom, Game Maker, etc, this software is my favorite so far atm (130 hrs at the time of this review). Highly recommend!
• gamedeal user

  May 3, 2022

  I'm admittedly not a great programmer, but know enough to get by and have created and submitted small projects to various game jams using Game Maker Studio, Godot, Construct and a few other engines, Pixel Game Maker included. Programming is my least favorite part of game development. Creating and watching ideas/gameplay mechanics come to life is what drives me, and while every engine has it's shortcomings, Pixel Game Maker simply lacks too much and is stuck in mediocrity, The Good: <*>I love the flow chart / state machine style programming approach. It makes clean and easy to read 'code', and is truly fun to put together. <*>Simple, built-in functionality to quickly start bringing your idea to life. Easily adjustable parameters for just about everything you would need in a video game. The Bad: <*>The flow chart / state machine approach can be far too limiting at times. They've definitely thought about certain edge cases, but since you're at the mercy of built in functions and the flow chart centered design you end up having to find creative but ultimately frustrating workarounds to do what would be a simple task in another engine. <*>Certain functions will simply not work / do what you're telling them to do, because there is a behind the scenes limitation in the engine that is just not apparent / discussed anywhere. <*>Missing commonplace features such as dynamic lights, pathfinding (no sensible way to implement it either), certain math functions, etc. <*>The physics implementation is a bit of a mess. <*>No clear and in-depth documentation. A few community members have been creating youtube video tutorials which are a blessing, but are still not enough. <*>Updates are extremely scarce, and offer barely any improvements or feature additions. The final and most personally limiting thing is the performance. It simply does not stand up to other engines, and the poor performance only further exasperates the issues above, where you won't be able to implement all the workarounds you'll need because the engine can't handle that many objects. Certain game genres are simply not achievable. You're severely limited in what you can implement and how much of it, else your game will not run at an acceptable frame rate, even on more than decent hardware. Great games have definitely been made in this engine, but I would strongly recommend any would be buyers to try out the demo and decide if it will fit for your use case. And don't hold your breath for any feature updates or fixes, you're basically buying the product as is. Still, despite all the negatives I listed above, this is the only engine where I can say I truly have fun putting together game logic, and I would have given this a thumbs up if they addressed the performance issues, and provided more frequent updates.
• NeonTheCoder

  May 24, 2022

  This "toolset" is a HUGE mess. Everything is translated horrendously, there is no documentation besides the bare minimum from the publisher, there is no help on the forums or online, and things you expect to just work just don't. Want to make a jump animation with a climb, idle, and fall? You have to make 3 different actions with different logic for each action so it properly plays the animation and you dont clip into a wall. Want to glide like Knuckles in sonic? Oh how tf am I supposed to do this when you cant even set the velocity of an object directly, I can make the gravity lower but oops that makes it when I start gliding I shoot up in the air from my current jump velocity. There's no way from what I can tell to directly change the behavior here. Also the fact there isnt a "any state" option to transition into a state from anywhere in the action map means you either end up with a shit load of wires going all over the place or a ton of shortcuts that make it impossible to follow whats happening in your code. Theres no offset for the camera, so I have to make an entire camera rig and somehow devise a method for it to follow below the character, unless I want to use the unreliable collision editor to make a connection point below the character and somehow get the camera to attach itself properly. As always RPG devs don't try to innovate with their products, just providing the bare minimum. The fact they are trying to bastardize unity into a gimped editor with no multitasking and singular window focus is insane to me.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 30, 2023

  extremely clunky and unresponsive, while getting things done in this engine is easier than others, the actual feel of using it is so abysmal and ways to learn it are scuffed online tutorials are often really poorly thought out and rigid, the built in engine stuff quite literally doesnt work, often times referring to functions that are changed/don't exist in the engine anymore due to update changes, such as asking you to click a button that isnt there to advance. even when i got passed the learning hurdle, just simply doing anything was just awful, everything is organized really haphazardly and thoughtlessly, and the controlling the damn thing just feels mind numbing. it got to a point where i simply just went back to programming my own game with how straight up bad this engine felt. its borderline abandoned with how slow meaningful updates are too. great games can be made with this, sure, but unless you're absolutely hellbent on not writing a single line of code, look towards other things
• JayHarper1

  Feb 19, 2023

  Despite my 0.1 hours of game time on record, I have had the pleasure of multiple hours trying to get the game to actually launch! If you love reading forums looking for solutions to problems that the devs should have long since fixed, this app is for you! Enjoy the thrill of finding yet another possible issue that could be preventing the app from actually launching; "Maybe it's the dual monitors that's creating the issue." Nope. "Oh, it must be my antivirus. I will whitelist the app, delete the entire folder, uninstall and reinstall it... better do that about thirty times, that should fix it." Try again. "I got it, I need to change to the latest beta version!" Wrong! There are many other potential issues that could be supposedly preventing this app from launching so there is no limit to the amount of fun you can have trying to figure out which one is causing it. HInt, there's a good chance that it's none of the ones you will read about on the forums and discussions. I want to make sure it's clear, I'm not talking about bugs and crashes, it simply will not launch. Maybe you will get lucky and it will just magically work, but if it doesn't... oh boy are you in for some fun. The difficulty curve of trying to make this thing run is just too much for me. Maybe it's too much to ask for, but I was kinda hoping I could buy it and it would just work. 10/10 frustration, 0/10 fun. I really would have liked to have tried it, but releasing something in such a poor state that it won't even launch is unacceptable. I definitely do not recommend buying it.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 24, 2018

  I know it's early access, but atm i don't recommend it. It crashes way to often even after a simple task of saving the project with verrrry small changes, the interface is extremely ugly, it gives you no real tutorial, little to no default resources for the user to experiment with, not fully translated, and is definitly not user friendly despite claiming to be related to the rpg maker series. I'm sorry to say but at this current moment, don't bother. They have way too much that need fixing and is not worth the price.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 25, 2018

  Ok, so its buggy, the interface needs a *lot* of work before it will be as user friendly as its more mature RPG Maker sibling, the sample resources included are almost non-existant and the user manual is lacking on detail.... but I kinda expected this when I bought it, and despite its bugs you *can* still use it. Using it reminded me of the early fan made translations before we got an official translation of RPG Maker. Is it worth the money that they are currently asking? Maybe, if you know a bit about how games work, but not if your an absoliute beginner. Will it be worth it if they finish the product to the same quality as RPG Maker? Yes, and if you are an absolute beginner you might want to wait for this to happen before you drop the kind of money they are asking. Due to this (and its obvious Early Access status) I am going to give a tentativly positive review. The product is still under construction and if you buy a product in Early Access and complain about it not being finished you have kinda missed the point.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 27, 2018

  Look here kids. Do you want to make your own Castlevania? Do you want to make your own Megaman? Do you want to make your own Ys? Then you are in luck, this IS the perfect tool for you. Easy to live with, able to use RMMV's tilesets, and no need for coding most vital scripts like basic movement, pretty much care free type of animation/screen building/transition setting/object placement. And zero scripting needs of creating text bubbles (Looking at you GMS2, and your godawful way to make a single text string pop up on screen). Also the animation tooling is so powerful, that you can actaully make anime with this, form hue change to blur, form resize to rotation, form transpranet to clocking, sometimes I wonder if Kadokawa's animation depertment use the very same tooling for making their older anime....... Would very recommend this, just mind you there are some very rough edges because this is by far a very early access version, you will have to withstand the poor performence, and some major bugs.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 21, 2019

  I see a lot of potential in this engine, and it could be something really special, but it's not quite there. I was extremely disappointed to see some of the tabs and labels are STILL in Japanese. When the integral part of software is UI based, it's kind of important that people can understand it. Secondly, the UI is quite a mess and is not very pleasant to use. I understand this is early access, so this wasn't the primary problem for me, but I really hope they do work on cleaning it up. If you're supplying a tool that allows people to create games without code, the interface needs to look and feel great, and it just doesn't. Now, if you're coming across from one of their previous products, like RPG Maker, do NOT expect a warm and welcoming process as you're used to. Pixel Game Maker MV is aimed at creating all kinds of games with far more customisation than RPG Maker, so it's obviously going to have a far higher learning curve. I just want you to understand that before thinking you're going to be spitting out a game in a day, because you won't. Another potential pitfall (through no fault of its own) is that there is very limited resources in terms of help and guides for this tool as it is still fairly new. This is another reason it may be better to wait for it to mature a little more. In conclusion, I found it's not worth the asking price in its current state, but with the UI cleaned up and fixed translations, it very well could be. All the features are definitely there. If you're reading these reviews because you're thinking about buying it, my advice would be to keep a close eye on it for a while before making a purchase.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 25, 2019

  I'm going into this review having used PGM a ton earlier in its development, don't let my steam time log fool you. Unfortunately, finally checking out 0.9.3, I see that nothing has changed. The user base's fundamental problems with PGM aren't being addressed, nor does it look like the developers have any intent of doing so.* Originally this review was much longer, so I've tried to condense it, and if I ever finish a video review, I'll link it here. Just read my final thoughts if there's too many words. -UI- The user interface problems are infamous. In addition to being completely unintuitive, it doesn't seem to scale at all, so unless you have the exact monitor specifications the devs do, apparently nothing is ever going to quite fit right. Ui is the number 1 complaint I see. Professional reviews, steam reviews, complaints on message boards, etc. If even half of the most obvious mistakes were fixed, you'd win the endorsement of a lot of people who really want to love this program, myself included. -Animations- [b] This is by far the jankiest, worst designed part of the entire program. [/b] PGM doesn't have a native graphics editor, which I don't mind. What I do mind is [i] literally everything else [/i]. Once you've struggled through importing your spritesheet (its own adventure), you're greeted by the uninterpretable UI for converting your sprite sheet into a library of actions your object can take. What PGM does have is a hit box editor which can be changed frame by frame. PGM also has a system of 4 different hit boxes that each object can have, each of which has its own properties and no explanation besides its name. Good luck. You can drag/resize the hit boxes with your mouse, but the outline of the box is pixel perfect, and if you miss, it will instead grab the sprite and offset the whole image. This is insane. The only real way to do boxes accurately is just to type the box size and coordinates into the table next to the sprite. -Built in character controls- [b] This is easily the best part. [/b] Once that nightmare is complete, you're left with one of the best parts of the program, a character with inherent platforming logic. You inform the program which direction the character is pointing in each action, and it bridges the gap. A tab in the objects profile will let you select the characters horizontal speed, jumping, damage output, health, etc. Once you've informed PGM of the control scheme, you more or less have a functioning character. This is the best part of the program. The program knows you're making a platformer (or top-down), so you don't have to re-invent the wheel every single time. This is what kept me with PGM so long. -Plugins- There is now a grand total of 3 plug-ins that try and gap some of the significant holes the program has. 1) Map auto-tiling, ported from RPG maker 2 & 3) UI for making branching dialogue trees that trigger variables These need to be already integrated into the program. (Or at the very least, the auto-tile does.) -Map making- The tile based scene creation seems to more or less be a port of RPG maker's, but with an obstacle course of ill fitting windows trying to stop you. Side note: Gimmick tiles (tiles that have triggers when touched) just barely work. Do not use them. The built in slopes function seems to function pretty well, but only on side scrollers. Top downs they work... mostly. -Programming logic- People complain about PGM's visual building blocks style, citing that it becomes a big tangled mess of lines and boxes. I think this also applies to regular code, documentation, or lawn mower instructions. If you write it, the way in which you organize it can make all the difference. If you read it, you have to have a basic understand of what you're looking at. I'm an incredibly visual learner, which makes it easy for me to arrange the nodes in a way that makes sense to me. At this point, the programming logic is the only thing that would make me consider staying with PGM. I can't let it get away totally scott-free though. That UI is still haunting you, and I'm often surprised by a function that the program doesn't have built in. (Side note: Why is the easiest thing in the whole program to implement screen shaking?) - Cutscenes, camera control, and other scene specific events - HAhahahahaha good luck - Physics - hahahahaha GOOD LUCK. Just because its there, fairly powerful, and pretty functional, (in the one demo that uses it extensively), it doesn't mean its a beast worth waking up. The physics engine does not like dealing with unusual circumstances, so don't rely on anything physics enabled to be essential to the play experience. Demonstration: go into the motocross demo and see if you can alter [i] any [/i] physics properties of the bike without rendering the demo unplayable. (It might cause the bike to literally explode, if you're lucky). - Final thoughts - I desperately want to recommend Pixel Game Maker MV. I really, really do. But the program wants to be taken seriously, with a price-tag to match. It's not broken, but this is even worse. Everything is technically serviceable, and so it won't be fixed. I could [i] almost [/i] see myself finishing a game on the program. Its fantastic features have pushed me to work around it's not-quite-broken features, and I've learned a lot (particularly about abstract thinking). The fact that parts of the program are still in untranslated Japanese shows where the dev's priorities lay. The program should have gone another two years of closed door development before being released in its early access form. Currently, I'd be willing to pay $15 to buy this program again. That may come off as harsh, but Game Maker Studio, Construct, and many other excellent dev platforms are free. *The devs seem active, and will answer questions sometimes. Its a high priority for them to fix bugs that crash the program, but anything else, (awful UI, waste of time documentation, animation manager) more or less won't be acknowledged, and are relegated to "and lots of other changes coming soon!™" TLDR: Remember Fallout 4 VR on day one? This is the game dev equivalent. It just works.™