What Sections and Topics Can I Find on the GameMaker Community Forum?

Updated

The GameMaker Community forum (forum.gamemaker.io) is organized into a handful of top-level sections, each with a distinct purpose: Programming for technical help, Community Chat for general discussion, Community Announcements for official news, Marketplace for assets and prefabs, Collaboration for team-building and job offers, and GMC Jam for the community's recurring game jam. If you're looking for an answer to a code problem, go straight to Programming; if you want to talk about the community itself, use Community Chat. The sections below explain what belongs where and how to browse efficiently.

Programming

This is the busiest section and the one most visitors arrive for. It's where members post technical questions and troubleshooting threads about GameMaker projects.

Typical thread titles visible on the forum index include things like "Dynamic, off-grid tilesets?", "The best way to allow two npcs to fight?", and "(2D Platformer) - Persisting issue with vertical moving platforms." Threads are tagged with status markers such as SOLVED, which makes it easy to spot questions that already have a working answer before you post your own.

Use this section when you have a concrete technical problem: an error message, unexpected behavior in your game, or a "how do I implement X" question. Because replies and view counts are shown in the thread list, you can gauge whether a topic is active or already resolved.

Community Chat

This section is for anything relevant to the GameMaker Community as a whole. The forum's own description states it should be your first stop before posting anywhere else, and it points to the Community Guidelines.

The important restriction: do not post programming or technical questions here. Those belong in Programming. Community Chat is for meta-discussion about the forum and community — for example, a thread titled "Forum Issue I can't reply" appears in this section.

Community Announcements

This section holds all official community announcements and news posts. It's a low-volume, high-signal area (the index shows roughly 248 threads and 13.2K posts) and is the right place to check for official updates rather than user questions. An example thread is "OFFICIAL Marketplace Future and the Prefab Library."

Marketplace

The Marketplace section covers assets and prefabs for GameMaker. It's where official or community marketplace-related news and discussion lives — the "Prefab Library" announcement above is an example of the kind of topic you'll find here.

Collaboration

This section is for portfolios, team building, and job offers. It is described as a moderated forum, so posts are reviewed. Use it if you're looking for collaborators, advertising your skills, or recruiting for a project.

GMC Jam

GMC Jam is the home of the community's regularly occurring game jam, with its own sub-forums (including a Community Jams sub-forum). The index shows around 180 threads and 20.8K posts here.

The current banner announcement gives a concrete example of how these events work: the Interstellar GMC Jam 60 runs from October 21st, 2026 12:00 UTC to October 26th, 2026 12:00 UTC, and features a "Clash of Gangs" team element alongside the usual individual prizes. A "Slow Jam 03 | Discussion" thread also appears in the sub-forum, showing that discussion threads accompany each jam.

How to Browse New and Featured Content

The forum's navigation menu provides several ways to keep up without reading every section:

  • New posts — the latest replies across the forum.
  • Latest activity — a broader activity stream.
  • What's new — recent content, including a Featured content view.

The forum index itself also lists the most recent threads with their section, author, reply count, view count, and last-post time, so you can scan activity at a glance.

Quick Reference

Section Use it for Notes
Programming Technical questions, errors, implementation help Busiest section; look for SOLVED tags
Community Chat Community-wide discussion No programming/technical questions
Community Announcements Official news and announcements Low volume, official posts
Marketplace Assets, prefabs, marketplace news —
Collaboration Portfolios, team building, job offers Moderated forum
GMC Jam Game jam events and discussion Has sub-forums, e.g. Community Jams

Practical Notes Before Posting

  • Read the Community Guidelines (linked from Community Chat) before your first post.
  • Match your topic to the section: technical problems go to Programming, not Community Chat.
  • The forum notes that JavaScript should be enabled for the best experience, and that an out-of-date browser may display the site incorrectly — worth checking if menus or threads behave oddly.
  • Logging in or registering is required to post; the index shows Log in / Register prompts for guests.