I thought I’d share a few different game makers and game engines that I’ve found. First is Game Maker 8, which gives you free reign to make all sorts of 2d games. I’m playing around trying to see if I can make side-scrolling RPG prototype similar to Maple Story (only much simpler because obviously I don’t have a crew of artists 
Right now I’m wavering between different game engines and different types of games. There’s also RPG Maker XP and VX, both of which have been used to make commercial shareware games. They make games much like those from the SNES RPGs in the heyday of console RPGs. They’re both pretty easy to use and allow you to focus on making your game rather than programing. Then there’s Multimedia Fusion 2 and it’s cheaper cousin The Games Factory, which allows for easy and quick creation of many different forms of platformers and action games, among other things. They’re all pretty fun to use and play around with. And of course there’s the free Adventure Game Studio or AGS that I was playing around with a while back (you may recall all the fancy 3d screenshots.) There’s some more powerful engines like Unity 3d, which is free, and Torque 3d, which is more expensive. Both are pretty amazing but are a little above my head right now. I’d rather stick to 2d, it’s simpler. But if you’re interested in making games there’s never been so many cool options.
As for me, right now being as ill as I am, I’m just kind of playing with different engines and working on trying to nail down what story I want to tell. I even have some ideas about how I could revitalize TFR, but right now I’m just not able to work on anything seriously yet. That’s the not so fun part of my illness. I can’t seem to stick with any one project or game engine at the moment. But I am trying to do some story writing. Right now I have several stories in the planning stage, but I’m not really happy with any of them, not yet anyway. But then right now the fun is in the experimentation, something to keep me busy. But hopefully I’ll settle on some story and game engine that I like soon.
I really like RPG Maker since it really let’s you focus on telling a story. The XP version allows more freedom of tile sets, while VX is more shiny and allows full color, but oddly limits the number of tile sets you can use. The result is that VX games tend to look more blocky, though vibrant in color. The XP games aren’t as vibrant, but allow for infinite tile sets. This means greater variety in the locations and game maps in your game. But the key to these types of games is the story, which is where I’m really stuck at the moment. As I mentioned I have several stories in the planning stage, but to write them out and make them good is another thing entirely. So for now I’m just going to keep planning.
