⚖️ Grade = B. Worth a buy, if you enjoy Shooting Zombie & Solider. However, if you're looking for advance tools to design, it doesn't have

✔️ User Friendly Interface
✔️ Menu screen modification
✔️ Men vs. Zombie gameplay
✔️ Outdoor Terrain Generator + Editor
✔️ Jumpscare Horror Game
✔️ Video tutorial for Beginner
❌ Video tutorial for Veteran
❌ Variety of Weapon
❌ Interior Creator Tool
❌ Conditional Branch
❌ Online PvP / PvE


🔎 Long version checklist ➜ Reveal
📢 Disagree + Criticize ➜ Write here

🕘 2022: Game released & thanks Dev for this gift :D
🕘 15 min later: It looks awesome
🕘 7 hours later: Errmm... felt missing something
🕘 16 hours later: I do know it is Early Access

🔊 Early Access project is cannot be sold or publish
🔊 Allow custom object file type such as: x, dbo, obj, fbx, gltf, glb
🔊 Entities behavior link to *.lua file, it is text editable
🔊 Object Strength = Health
🔊 Flank = Target often move around
🔊 RPG and Puzzle feature is coming soon
🔊 No VR at this moment
🔊 No 3rd person camera
🔊 Community Rating: Positive

⚠️ Much better program from previous ➜ True
⚠️ Incredible program ➜ Only for outdoor FPS with Zombie & Solider
⚠️ Just A+++++++ ➜ Depend on user expectation

💎 Storyboard management
💎 Menu background modification
💎 Terrain Generator
💎 Variety of Skybox
💎 Diverse Outdoor Location
💎 Character customization available
💎 Preset Houses
💎 Many UI Theme available
💎 Many props available
💎 High quality FPS weapons
💎 Custom game icon

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GameGuru MAX is a new game-maker software developed by The Game Creators, known for their previous products, GameGuru (now dubbed "GameGuru Classic") and arguably more successful and well-known "FPS Creator" and "DarkBasic" products.

GameGuru MAX makes a lot of steps in the right direction; bringing back some elements from FPSC that were lost in translation to GameGuru such as allied characters, and even including many new features like an inventory system that carries between levels, a much more intuitive way to customize the various HUD screens/menus throughout, and a visual logic system to quickly string things together. Many new editor features overall make the user experience a lot more fluid and fun, and the new terrain system lets you quickly get a basic landscape to start off with.

It does a lot right, and sounds good, so why the negative review?

Three main things: Bugs, slow development, and very poor optimization.

First, the bugs. Lord, are they numerous. You got everything from minor graphical bugs, such as character's T-Posing for a moment before activating or particles rendering out-of-order to things behind them, to major game-breaking bugs, like entities not getting copied over to a standalone or changes made in the level editor not saving properly. And these bugs are not only numerous, but they seem to take quite a long time to get fixed. And at that, when they finally are reported as "fixed", half of the time a quick test reveals a number of older bugs have reappeared, no doubt due to a lack of regression testing. I know fixing bugs is far easier said than done, but the sheer number of bugs, and the age of some of them, are both definitely worrying.

Second, the slow development. GameGuru MAX was in early-access since March 2022, and was in a limited-access-alpha stage for a year or two before that. Not to mention, GameGuru MAX was built on the foundation of GameGuru Classic, which in turn was built on the foundation of FPSC, giving GameGuru MAX some roots that go back just shy of 2 decades. It is very unfortunate then that we're still dealing with problems that plagued us back in 2005 with FPSC, like standalone builds not copying over all entities/assets properly. Features like improved weather, particle effects for blood/explosions/guns/etc, nevermind major features like multiplayer, are all indefinitely postponed with absolutely no roadmap or clear vision for the future. It makes development feel even slower than it actually is, and it certainly doesn't instill a lot of confidence that MAX will get finished anytime soon.

Finally, the poor optimization. Visually, with the right assets, MAX can look about on-par with a mid-gen Xbox One/PS4 era game. Respectfully impressive, especially for TGC, but definitely not something that should run, frankly, as terribly as it does. An RTX 3050 with 16GB of RAM and a latest-gen Intel i7 shouldn't run an empty outdoors level at a choppy 45-ish FPS with poor frame-pacing. The recommended specs on MAX's steam page are absurdly high, and not realistic to expect an average user to have when distributing a game you've made in MAX. Indoors/small levels can fare a bit better when you drag the camera draw distance slider way down, but there's still inconsistent frame pacing and stutters/micro-freezes even at 60 FPS, and overall it's a bandaid-fix for a serious underlying issue that needs to be addressed at the source. Much attention needs to be placed here eventually to get MAX running much better than it does currently.

Overall, GameGuru MAX is a step in the right direction by TGC, but it carries a lot of problems that plagued it's ancestors. It has the same jankiness, poor performance, and plethora of bugs we've sadly come to expect from TGC. They've made some progress towards a better product, but with the lack of any kind of roadmap we're totally in the dark of when we can actually expect things to wrap up, even if they're inevitably going to be far away. Overall, GameGuru MAX just isn't in any kind of state where I could in good faith recommend it to someone else.

I'll be more than happy to turn this review into a positive one if things improve; there just isn't an alternative to MAX on the market for a game-maker that's both fun/easy and capable. I want this kind of product to exist so badly, but MAX just can't deliver in it's current state.

UPDATE: 5/3/2024------------------------------

Performance has been massively improved, now empty levels can run upwards of 120 FPS on the same system. A populated level can keep a locked 60 with V-Sync on easily. Praise is certainly warranted and granted in this area; it took a while to get here, but a job done well takes time, and all that. However, there are still some stutters/hitching noticeable with certain gameplay events, potentially being the engine loading in an asset(?) but there's no asynchronized asset loading, so the entire engine freezes briefly as the asset is pulled from disk. (I may be wrong, it could be some other issue, like an operation being ran on the CPU that hitches the engine for similar reasons of not being asynchronous; basically meaning the entire engine waits for the process to complete, rather than being able to run it "on the side" outside of the main gameplay loop, if that makes sense.)

The other issues however, still remain. The engine struggles to build a reliable and stable standalone, often consistently crashing when trying to go beyond the first level, missing assets from levels beyond the first, or just plain having desynchronization from editor-to-standalone. (IOW the final game doesn't look or behave identical to how it does when tested in-editor, like the sun's position in the sky not being the same for example.) I also noticed a new bug where explosions don't damage enemies at all.

Development still unfortunately seems to be rather slow; there's still no roadmap, and MAX hasn't really gotten any new "major gameplay features" just yet, i.e. new capabilities usable for a game project, over background inclusions, like the new performance settings. (Such as; particles for explosions/bullet impacts/etc. something that has an immediate and noticeable positive impact on the quality of your game.)

Overall, MAX is improving, but very, very slowly, and very, very subtly. I'm not saying they should rush this, but ideally it may be worth temporarily focusing what manpower they have on areas that are more immediate (new gameplay features that can more directly appeal to users resulting in more sales to bolster development), or biting the bullet and fronting costs to hire more developers to speed up whatever backend development they seem constantly lost within.

GameGuru Max has been in Alpha for a while and has been in Early Access for a while now, so it's hard to say if GameGuru Max is worth more than GameGuru. Currently there is a lack of new content or the creation of other game genres. However, it is planned that the software will reach gold status after about six months and that you will not only be able to create RPG or puzzle games, but also VR and multiplayer games and of course smaller details such as swimming and much more.

Due to the Early Access status, there are still some bugs, which is why publishing your own games is currently not allowed. The bugs not only affect the programming, but also errors in the game that are not passed on by the software and thus make playing through impossible. The development itself is actually child's play and easy to implement using the tutorial, programming languages ​​are not required, but you can't expect powerful games either. Graphically, the games created still look old-fashioned and hardly better than with GameGuru and this will probably not change in the full version either, but it is sufficient for practicing or getting a taste of it.

Currently only first-person shooters that can already be created in GameGuru are possible. Assets and graphics are still old-fashioned, but you'll get a lot for the first small project. If you have always wanted to create your own game, you can use this software to get a little insight and, thanks to the good tutorials, you can already gain your first experience. As soon as other game genres are possible, such as RPG, GameGuru Max could also be more worthwhile than GameGuru.

There is potential, but whether the developers will use it remains to be seen. how good GameGuru Max is going to release.

If you like this review, then please consider giving it a thumbs up. I've also reviewed other games that you might find interesting. If so please follow my Curator.

Reviewed on: Win10 Home 64-bit, Intel i5-11600K, GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB TUF, 32GB DDR4-3600 RAM, 2 x Kingston NV1 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD, Internet Broadband 300/50 Mbit

Although I love using this Engine I have to give it a bad review. It's advertised as easy to make a game with and no coding but if you wanna to make it do everything you want it to do you have to figure it out on your own. When suggesting enhancements in discord you get treated as though your being unreal and thier exuse is it's designed to be an easy game make not a easy asset importer. It's always okay for them to critisize you when you struggle using thiere engine, but when offering solutions that would fix it they red button joke and completly laugh at any suggestions you give. Oh Unreal and Unity don't do it is another exuse. Guys look the hype is just that a hype if you want easy your not gonna find it here. you can't even get an animated model in the engine ready to go without a lot of steps. I have had other friends try this engine with the same result. I have 6 projects using this Engine and half of them are on hold because eithe bugs or lack of abilities of the engine. I could literally do more at this point in Coppercube 6. Feel free to share your own experiences.

Being a fan of TheGameCreators' products since the days of DarkBasic and FPS Creator I was excited to see they were hard at work creating another game making program. My first impressions were positive. The menu system is simple and easy to understand and I'm quite a fan of the dynamic lighting and terrain editor. However, object placement is frustratingly clunky and enemy AI is just as ignorant as it was back in the FPS Creator days. I think it has potential however and the ability to import models is a plus, but as it stands it just feels like 2006's FPS Creator with a new coat of DX12 paint.

The addons cost nearly as much as the engine itself. $50 for the base application and $40 for a particle editor? Really?

Can't wait for VR Support!

If you have $80 and want to easily make a game, there are many amazing templates for Unreal Engine 5, which is an industry standard that can be used to easily make any game you want. FPS, RPG, Third Person, Action Adventure, Multiplayer, 2D, Top Down, Flying, and even VR.

If you are looking for a free FPS game template, Epic Games has a really good one called Lyra as well as enough high quality assets and materials from real life objects photo scans into the engine for you to make a game for completely free until you make $1 million dollars in profits.

This engine is not for any serious game development, maybe just for games you can share with your friends and family. The only thing it is genuinely good at is teaching people how to make games, and honestly that's what the focus of this should be.

The only person that will make a good game is you. And nothing worth doing is easy. Don't let GameGuru fool you with all of their buzzwords, you will get infinitely less out of this than a proper game engine than some vague "As Seen on TV" product straight out of a 2005 scam for 4 easy payments of $19.99 + Tax. And $29.99 each for what would be free updates in any other product, including this developer's own!

If you are set on using this specific toolset, I would recommend using FPS Creator Black Ice instead. It costs $0, and is an open source project being actively worked on by a team of developers that properly add new features that everyone wants, has lots of free DLC, and their team constantly fixes bugs and issues that their engine has. Which is something that these people could take notes from.

If you want the most recent version of FPS Creator Black Ice, it's $10 and even has lots of features that MAX has yet to even consider, including proper standalone multiplayer support, dynamic water, PhysX support, destruction, objectives, and much more. And if you have $80 to spend, you have $10.

And I'm sure you don't want to be doing the equivalent of going to a fancy restaurant to eat moldy food and be charged for napkins. Alongside not even getting the drinks you ordered and getting harassed and hunted down in the hopes that you'll just be silent and not complain about moldy food to the health department.

So here's a better question I would like to ask you: Who wants to be a millionaire?

Update: That's a much more professional response than cyber-bullying your customers and trying to bribe them with Steam Points. See? I knew you could do it! Now if you could apply this kind of positive and productive attitude towards a proper open source release of GameGuru Classic, you'd be making good progress towards your objective of letting everyone make games easily!

Update 2: Well it only took me getting shadow banned, bullied, and blacklisted from every social media you had for working godrays and a source code link! See? I knew you could do it! Now go get yourself an ice cream cone, you deserve it! Just remember you still need to make it open source!

Update 3: Wow, that github you banned me from when you couldn't even add a simple graphics menu is down to 28 reports? How many people did you ban to pretend it got to that number? By the way, I took a crap in that ice cream. Those corn chili leftovers tasted wonderful. And I wanted to spread that cheer all over that cone. You are the most disgusting and annoying idiot I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. Merry Krampus, Bambi. Send my regards to the reaper. And shove off.

Would not recommend at the moment even in early access , have been using TGC products for a long time.
i am disappointed in there development of max it is just fps creator with a new interface and a beefed up level editor.
i don't know what they have in mind accept a misconception to users. building there hopes up to get to a skill set
they cant achieve. TGC unfortunately have just not learned to move on to a more modern and updated approach .
unfortunately they just keep moving on to a new engine build each time they can not build a successful engine.
the level editor looks good, the terrain editor looks good, but still the same engine under the bonnet. they have tried
to build around the wicked engine. but its the same old story, they just cant build the features needed. the importer
for characters is just pathetic considering how long they spent on it, it was a complete waste of time , TGC should have learned this by now, in a star rating i would give 3/10 for effort . but it will lead to more disappointment for young developers, being stringed along for the financial ride.

It looks good, sounds good. It's not good. They keep pumping out dlc almost the price of the actual product. Very unstable software often crashes. It even crashed taking a screenshot.