GameMaker and the pitfalls of game design

Having spent most of yesterday working through relevant gamemaker tutorials, I've now reached the level of beginner. This project is a lot of work for someone with no experience designing games, but I'm having a lot of fun designing assets. Today, I decided to shell out for a paid tutorial based on Owen's recommendations. I'm glad I did! I bought a GameSpark Tutorial (found here http://www.gamesparkonline.com/courses) on platform game development for the princely sum of $10, and it's made a huge difference. I have more confidence with the software and I'm looking forward to trying out some of my new skills with the sprites and backgrounds I've been fiddling with in Photoshop. I'm still not sure how I'll be able to integrate the Katamari style gameplay that I pitched to the class, but I've a few things to try out that might allow me to implement these features into my alpha. Only 5 days left!