About the Reviewers

Ryan Laley is an independent games designer. He has been a lecturer in video games design at South Essex College at further and higher education levels for over 5 years. He has been using GameMaker: Studio professionally during those years, and he continues to develop and publish games using it. He began his teaching career after graduating from university, and since then, he has covered every aspect of games development in his classes, including 2D and 3D.

In his spare time, he independently develops his own games and publishes them himself under the studio name of Friendly Fire games. His most recent projects focus on mobile phone platforms, with his latest release Blobb in 2015. His future projects will continue to expand on mobile platforms and eventually onto PCs.

I'd like to thank Jade for her continued support and allowing games to continue to be more than just a fun past-time, but a career as well.

John M. Walker, PE is a licensed professional engineer in industrial engineering and is currently a licensed full-time teacher in computer science and programing at Cleveland High School in Portland, Oregon. He has been teaching full time for the last 15 years for High School and Regional Professional Higher Ed conferences.

He has worked for more than 20 years as an information technology manager for high-technology firms dealing with systems administration and networking architecture and engineering. His favorite position was director of technology for the Portland Trail Blazers, while designing and constructing the Moda Center.

He has also reviewed GameMaker Essentials, Packt Publishing.