Today I want to share a proposal that could turn Game Maker into a truly powerful engine. This message is addressed to the entire Sandbox community, to the top management of TSB, and personally to Seb, Arthur, and their CTO.

The chances that Seb and the TSB team would agree to implement a random idea from some unknown person are close to zero. So, dear reader, no matter how much you like this idea, don’t expect it to become reality. But still, I want to write a post about it.

It’s a wild concept... 🤯

Game Maker X

I am publicly proposing that TSB and its top management abandon their original Game Maker and instead use the open-source engine Godot to build a new version called Game Maker X.

Game Maker X is a fork of Godot. By using Godot as the foundation, Game Maker would become a powerful engine. Its games could run on any platform, it’s optimized, lightweight, and easy to learn. It offers complete creative freedom. 💪

Godot is an industry-standard engine that stands alongside Unity. And after the scandal Unity faced a year ago, Godot has only grown in popularity. Games made with Godot are earning their developers millions of dollars and are easy to create. Around Godot, there’s a large indie developer community - many of whom would become more interested in The Sandbox platform if it were built on Godot.

Why Godot?

There are many engines out there, so why Godot specifically? That’s a good question - and the answer is actually pretty simple. The Sandbox already tried Unity, and from the looks of it… it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. Unreal Engine? Yeah, maybe - but it’s reeeally heavy, clunky, and not exactly beginner-friendly.

Just take a look at the image below - it speaks for itself. 👇

Open Source

Godot is a stable, open-source engine. It’s completely free, requires no royalties, and its MIT license allows anyone to fork it - which means it can be transformed into Game Maker X.

Using Godot would save TSB a huge amount of money compared to paying royalties to Unity.

It’s a better choice than reinventing the wheel like the original Game Maker. It’s reliable, and it’s cheap. 😊

Accessibility and Cross-Platform Support

Godot is powerful, logical, and easy to understand. It uses GDScript, which is 90% similar to Python, and also supports C#.
Godot is highly respected in the indie developer community.

Among all game engines, Godot stands alongside Unity and Unreal Engine. It’s very stable, and many successful titles have been released with it - some of which have earned millions of dollars.

Godot is lightweight (~200 MB) and cross-platform, meaning games made with Game Maker X would run smoothly on mobile devices as well.

Thanks to GDScript and C#, The Sandbox would become an attractive opportunity for experienced indie developers. 😎

Technology

If Game Maker X were built on top of Godot, everything would change dramatically.

• Physics - Real 2D and 3D physics bodies, collisions, impulses, and even soft bodies if needed.
• AI - Godot gives access to proper state machines, pathfinding, raycasting, and full logic scripting in GDScript or C#.
• Modding - Instead of a closed template with strict limitations, creators could use open scenes, export custom code, work with external resources, and even build their own mechanics as plugins.
• Graphics - Oh, the freedom! We could finally build games that actually look beautiful and unique.

And all of this would live inside a fully-featured scene-and-node system, where every entity can be a real “living object” with its own behavior, memory, and history.

Game Maker X wouldn’t just be an “avatar builder” anymore - it would become a tool for creating full-fledged games inside the metaverse. 🤙

New Opportunities and Markets...

Games made in Game Maker X could be independently published on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
This would create extra motivation for people to build projects within The Sandbox ecosystem - while also giving them a chance to earn revenue through other popular platforms, reaching a massive global audience.

Meet the kinds of games made with Godot:

Using Game Maker X gives every developer more motivation - because even if their game doesn’t gain traction inside The Sandbox, they’ll still have the chance to publish it on more popular platforms.

And millions of players - along with thousands of developers - will discover that The Sandbox even exists. Just imagine a player who downloads a cool game on Steam, and on the splash screen it says: Powered by The Sandbox.

That’s an underrated cross-marketing idea. Yep. 💵

Can TSB Pull It Off?

Short answer - yes, they absolutely can. TSB has a solid team of engineers, and they’re smart enough to make this happen. Especially considering that Godot already comes with a ton of features out of the box - no need to reinvent the wheel. Compared to the original Game Maker, Godot is miles ahead in terms of possibilities.

I genuinely believe TSB can handle it, and here’s why: there are real examples of people pulling off similar forks solo. Just look at RPG in a Box - a fully functional game engine built on Godot, created by just one guy, Justin Arnold.

Let that sink in - one person made a whole engine like that. He didn’t have a big team; he just took a fork and reshaped it into something awesome.

If he can do it solo… are you telling me the TSB team couldn’t? 🫠

The Way

Godot It’s a total gift. An open-source engine under the MIT license - take it, do whatever you want with it: change the UI, build your own tools, and you don’t even have to share the source code if you don’t want to.

TSB could reskin Godot to match their brand, plug in support for .vxr and .vxm formats, add LAND integration and a node-based system, simplify the logic - and boom: Game Maker X, but actually usable.

And the best part? It’s all legally clean. MIT lets you fork it and keep everything to yourself. No patent traps, no obligations. 🤘

If I were sitting at TSB or Animoca, I’d seriously consider this pivot. It’s a real chance to breathe new life into the ecosystem - and finally attract real developers.

The Cost of Changing Tech

Switching to a new engine comes with both pros and cons. Obviously, The Sandbox community has gotten used to what the OG Game Maker offers. Some people might feel uncomfortable moving to Game Maker X - while others have been waiting for exactly this kind of change.

Building Game Maker X would require smart architectural design to make sure the engine stays lightweight and keeps the simplicity of the original OG Game Maker, while still harnessing the full power of Godot.

Of course, this kind of pivot won’t be easy: it would mean letting go of the OG Game Maker and its architecture. It would require explaining the reasons behind the change to the community and landowners, and having enough resources to build a new interface, documentation, and logic.

Backward compatibility might be lost. But if possible, it would be a good idea to keep the ability to publish games made in the OG Game Maker - just to avoid upsetting fans of the old GM. 🤝

It’s no secret that TSB has spent many years developing their own no-code engine - and to be fair, it’s not that bad. But honestly, it still feels like reinventing the wheel.

At the current pace of development, the OG Game Maker would need at least another 10 years just to become a decent engine.

And One More Thing

We’ve talked a lot about Game Maker - but what about VoxEdit?

It’s impossible not to bring up Blockbench here, the editor that’s already a favorite in the voxel community. It’s powerful, flexible, and honestly, you could totally build a “VoxEdit X” on top of it.

Now, Blockbench is licensed under GPL-3.0, which means: if you modify it, you must release the source code. So yes, reskinning Blockbench is technically possible - but you’d have to open up all your changes.

And here’s where it gets interesting

If The Sandbox were to go down that road, it would open the door to the community. People could build their own custom versions of VoxEdit X, tailored to their workflows - while TSB could still keep control over the API and the format specs for incoming models.

It’s a real compromise: editors become more flexible, but the ecosystem stays structured. The only question is - are they ready for that kind of openness? 🤨

Blockbench has a large community, and with this editor, you won’t run into overlapping polygon issues like in VoxEdit. Blockbench is the first step toward beautiful game assets in The Sandbox.

Just look at the amazing things people are creating in Blockbench!

Conclusion

Building a new version of Game Maker based on Godot isn’t just a technical experiment - it could become the foundation for the next chapter of The Sandbox ecosystem. The MIT license makes it legally possible to adapt the engine however needed. Godot’s strong community and technical capabilities offer tools for making real games, not just “experiences.”

A move like this would attract serious indie developers, fuel platform growth, and open the door to a mature UGC economy and entirely new markets.

It’s a challenge - but also an opportunity. Maybe now is the time to stop patching outdated tools… and start building something truly new.

Thanks for reading to the end! 💀

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