Driller Engine

"Driller Engine can help you make better games faster and quicker. No more having to write large amounts of code!"

- Official attention grabber

Driller Engine (ドリラーエンジン) is a game development tool created by Hiroshi Takajima and Kenjirou Nasaya formerly for the Commodore Amiga but now available on the main operating systems. The engine is designed to have beginners and novice computer users, and especially children, make video games without having to learn a complex programming language like C++ or Python.

Almost all Drillimation games were made using Driller Engine, using programming actions combined with the Driller Engine Scripting Language. Originally intended to be an animation program to animate the anime, Takajima chose to make a game development system instead to develop the original Mr. Driller game. Several notable franchises, including Touhou Project and To Heart, as well as several legendary games by Seymour Games in the 1990s, saw their start on Driller Engine. The program can also export to consoles and other operating systems easily without reverse engineering.

After an initial success with the program, several third-party manufacturers, as well as independent developers, began using Driller Engine for game development.

Kisekae Editor
First introduced in Driller Engine 2, the Kisekae Set System, often abbreviated as KiSS, is an editor used for creating characters in Driller Engine-based games. Kisekae is short for kisekae ningyou (着せ替え人形); a Japanese term meaning "dress-up dolls". Unlike standard computer art which creates or displays traditional art via a computer, the KiSS uses the computer as the medium, allowing the character to be not only be animated but can also be exported into interactive sprites/models for use in-game.

FMOD system
Used in all Driller Engine versions, the FMOD system supports all major sound formats and even includes the ability to play Protracker (.mod), Scream Tracker (.s3m), FastTracker (.xm), Impulse Tracker (.it), and even .mo3 files.

Reception
Driller Engine has been critically successful and acclaimed. Seymour Games was one of Drillimation's first licensees for the program. Shortly after Seymour's debut with Driller Engine, other game studios across the Vlokozu Union was using it as well. By the late 2000s, almost every game studio there was using Driller Engine.