It is one of the earliest all-in-one game design products aimed at the general consumer, preceded by Broderbund's The Arcade Machine in 1982.

Several sample files are included: a demo sequence featuring animated sprites and music, a recreation of Pitfall!, and a birthday greeting.

GameMaker is divided into five tools, each of which consists of a graphical interface controlled with the joystick: The programming language used by GameMaker is reminiscent of other early programming languages like BASIC, but with several proprietary and tightly integrated graphics and sound facilities.

Some limitations of Gamemaker are imposed by the Commodore 64 architecture, and some by the software itself: Arnie Katz in Ahoy!

Gazette called it "a thorough, complete package that makes it relatively easy to design arcade games that actually work.