An Introduction
In the misty prehistory of 1999—a Thursday-ish sort of year—Dark Basic Software materialized in Northern England. It was conceived by Lee Bamber as an ingenious, only mildly suspicious method of avoiding conventional employment. Against all sensible expectations, it worked.
This experiment soon evolved into The Game Creators, transforming much like a caterpillar into a butterfly, albeit one with more keyboards and a refusal to shed its bugs. The mission was simple: make game development approachable for anyone possessing curiosity, electricity, and a healthy tolerance for creative chaos. From the outset, tools like DarkBASIC acted as friendly translators between human imagination and stubborn computers. Many first games were born this way; some were even intentional. Most were completed after exactly 42 cups of tea—the minimum quantity required to understand collision detection.
Today, that spirit persists. After the original adventure reached its natural conclusion, Lee reclaimed the reins under the company’s founding name. Now less a formal organization and more a jubilant band of fifty-somethings who have dealt with the paperwork by setting fire to it, we continue the serious business of bedroom coding. We remain a cheerful footnote in gaming history that refuses, quite politely, to fade away.
Whether or not it represents the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and game development remains under active investigation. Below are some of the products we’ve created over the years.
Our Products
GameGuru MAX – MAXIMUM POWAH!
A modern 3D game engine built on the controversial theory that enormous power should be available to ordinary mortals. It enables creators to assemble richly detailed worlds with a reassuring amount of clicking, dragging, and the quiet conviction that this time it will definitely work. Against all odds, it usually does.
AppGameKit Studio – Like Before, but Better
A cross-platform coding environment devoted to the civilised idea that writing the same program repeatedly is a sign that something has gone wrong. It lets developers write code once and send it off to live productive lives on many devices, where it continues to behave more or less as instructed.
GameGuru Classic – Creativity with the Safety Off
A 3D sandbox that removes as many barriers as possible between imagination and a playable game, encouraging rapid experimentation and the cheerful pressing of buttons to see what happens. What happens is frequently a game.
AppGameKit – Write Once, Deploy All Over The Place
The evolutionary successor to DarkBASIC, equipped with a formidable command set and a passport valid on numerous platforms. It spreads games far and wide, carrying with them the unmistakable signature of their creators and the occasional charming quirk.
FPS Creator X10 – The Brave Experiment
An ambitious expedition into new technological territory that advanced bravely, discovered several important truths about the universe, and demonstrated that even an ungodly loud explosion accompanied by flying debris can be educational. The lessons learned were carefully collected, dusted off, and used to make everything afterwards considerably better and only slightly less explosive.
FPS Creator – Instant 3D Shooter Gratification
A no-code toolkit for building first-person shooters at a pace that surprised even the people using it. Packed with assets and sensible shortcuts, it allowed creators to produce playable action before their tea had time to lodge a formal complaint.
DarkBASIC Professional – Power with Extra Pointiness
A supercharged successor to DarkBASIC that delivered ease of use, flexibility, and so many features, it gave coders the impression that if a thing could be imagined, there was probably already a command for it. Creators embraced it with enthusiasm, bashing out code with cheerful determination. It became a spookily successful programming language and is still spoken of in respectful tones in retirement homes all around the world, where veterans occasionally nod sagely and mutter, “That was a good decade.”
The 3D Game Maker – Arrange and Play
A no-code system for constructing 3D games by arranging components until they cooperated, which many considered encouraging, and a few even considered playable. It invited creators to build worlds the way one assembles an elaborate toy set, snapping pieces together until something entertaining emerged. For many, it was a first glimpse of the delightful realisation that making games was not only possible, but dangerously addictive.
DarkBASIC – The Original Spark
The 1999 language that began the entire adventure, proving that game programming could be accessible, enjoyable, and only mildly hazardous. It handed ordinary humans the keys to interactive creation and trusted them to experiment responsibly, which they did in the broadest possible sense of the word. From this small and cheerful beginning grew a long tradition of tools dedicated to turning curiosity into playable reality.