The GameMaker Awards were, as always, a showcase of some truly incredible GameMaker creations. This year we changed up a few things with the nominations and the new Community Legend Award. We are amazed at the amount of voters we had this year over 15,000! (15,303 to be precise)

Now… We’re delighted to announce your winners:

• Best Game: DELTARUNE - Toby Fox
• Most Anticipated Game: MINDWAVE - HoloHammer
• Best Tool: GMRoomLoader - Gleb Tsereteli
• Community Legend: Mors

GameMaker Awards 2025 ‘Best Game’ Winner: DELTARUNE

This year’s winner of the coveted ‘Best Game’ award is DELTARUNE!

Dive into the parallel story to UNDERTALE! Fight or spare your way through action-packed battles as you explore a mysterious world alongside an endearing cast of new and familiar characters.

Winning this category is always a challenge, and the shortlist for Best Game this year highlighted some of the very top indie releases, including:
 

• ANTONBLAST - Summitsphere
• Keep Driving - YCJY Games
• The King is Watching - Hypnohead
• Öoo - NamaTakahashi, Tiny Cactus Studio
• UFO 50 - Mossmouth

GameMaker Awards 2025 ‘Most Anticipated’ Winner: MINDWAVE

Your ‘Most Anticipated’ winner is the fast-paced microgame frenzy, MINDWAVE from  HoloHammer!

Play through collections of rapid-fire microgames formed from the minds of multiple colourful opponents in this cerebral story-driven take on games like WarioWare.

MINDWAVE came out on top against another amazing shortlist, including:

• ARTIUS: Pure Imagination - PVic Games
• The Ballad of Bellum - BokehDev
• MÖRK BORG Heresy Supreme - Morbidware
• Tinkerlands - CodeManu, Endless Coffee

GameMaker Awards 2025 ‘Best Tool’ Winner: GMRoomLoader

New for 2025 is the ‘Best Tool’ award, which was claimed by GMRoomLoader from developer Gleb Tsereteli.

Originally made back in 2024 for the GameMaker Kitchen Cookbook Jam #1. GMRoomLoader is a pure GML Free and Open Source GameMaker library made for creating room prefabs and loading room contents at runtime, AKA "loading other rooms into the current room".

The other finalists for the ‘Best Tool’ are all worth trying out:

• GMLive - YellowAfterlife
• Post-Processing FX - FoxyOfJungle
• Input - Juju Adams, Alynne Keith
• Scribble - Juju Adams

GameMaker Awards 2025 ‘Community Legend’ Winner: Mors!

New for 2025 was the ‘Community Legend’ award! We wanted to add something to show our gratitude to all the amazing people using GameMaker

Our very first Community Legend award was claimed by Mors! 

Mors is a game designer and programmer from Turkey, and one half of Distant Illusions. He loves making polished, juicy games. He’s been making games for over 15 years on all kinds of engines so we are super grateful he chooses GameMaker and continues to inspire and help the community while making his own games Operius DX being the most recent. 

The other finalists for the ‘Community Legend’ that you should definitely keep an eye on are:

• DragoniteSpam
• PixelatedPope
• SaraJS
• TabularElf
   

Thank you to everyone who nominated games, tools and community figures and all those who voted. We’ll see you next year!

Happy GameMaking!

Written by Becca O'Sullivan

Becca lives in the socials, creating and posting content. When she’s not working, she’s balancing being a committee member for Dundee Ceramics Workshop and TrueNorth MegaGames, running small art business, making cosplay, playing TTRPG’s, hosting events and guesting at conventions.