Games where the objective is to let players make whatever they desire have risen in popularity as of late; such as the RPG Maker series as well as Mario Maker. With the massive success of Mario Maker for Nintendo, the company released Game Builder Garage, a more general game that encourages players to make games of all kinds. One of the players it encouraged to build a game with its tools turned out to be Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's own Masahiro Sakurai.
Game Builder Garage was announced a month ago and released on June 11th. The game walks players through making little minigames such as "Tag Showdown," "Thrill Racer," and "On a Roll." Once the player has made the preset games, the player then has the freedom to make any game they desire with in-game assets, putting to use what they learned while playing the title.
Sakurai went against his usual game development experience and made a quick little shooter game where the player's only options are to accelerate and shoot, mapped to the same button. The boss also attacks with giant purple disks once it's at low enough health, and the music speeds up when the player gets closer to victory.
The Smash Bros. Ultimate director demonstrates the game in a video he posted on Twitter, showing what happens when the player dies and when the player succeeds in the clip with ease. He also explains small details of how the game works such as that the player stopping the acceleration with momentum gives you the option to perform a sharp turn in the replies to his own post.
Where other game-building titles such as Dreams are rather customizable, Game Builder Garage only works with its own assets, which leads to less customization but also more straightforward functionality. Game Builder Garage allowing players to make their own sprites offers a bit more freedom with what players can make unique to them, but it may fall flat compared to other titles.
There is something to be said about Game Builder Garage taking Masahiro Sakurai's free time away from Smash Bros. into making even a small shooter title, however. When Sakurai isn't programming and testing future Smash fighters, it seems he can be found making smaller games instead. Unfortunately, Sakurai has stated that he isn't sure he can share the game IDs from his personal accounts, so what titles he makes will be between him and his Switch alone.
Game Builder Garage is available now for Nintendo Switch.