3-Step Studio is a new game development tool from GarageGames, the makers of the Torque engine. It is a visual-editor based development tool with little or no programming required to make games. At the moment it is in alpha and only supports Tower Defence and Blackjack style games, however it’s very likely that a shmup template will be added in the future as GarageGames have a history of using shmups in their Torque2D tutorials.

It’s still in a private testing phase, but once it’s release it will be free and will build games for Windows, MacOS and iOS platforms. Find out more at the website – 3stepstudio.com