Freeware Game Creation Engines

[LVUER]

I never use full version of Engine001, but the free version is very confusing and not that good. And I think $60 is very expensive (for engine like that). With that amount of money, you could get RPG Maker VX (the latest one) or IG Maker. And you could buy Game Maker for only $40 ($25 if you buy it before June 1st this year).

Or you could try Construct, a new engine that I just found recently. People say it's really good, but I can't run the program after I install it... Oh, and it's free.

[RayRayTea]

Just for the record, here are some more that are free but I wouldn't recommend for various reasons. I'm writing this off the top of my head and from memory so take it for what it's worth.

Wintermute Engine
Point and click adventure maker. Seems pretty powerful. Current version 1.9.1 was released on 2010-01-01.
Deal breaker: the last time I tried it the helpfiles were a few versions behind.

The Games Factory 2 NG edition
The "normal" TGF2 is pretty cute but way overpriced compared to other engines and outdated - the basic idea for the interface is genius but the implementation is underdeveloped and buggy. Its selling point is "make games without programming", which is intentionally misleading since you have to program absolutely everything (IG Maker is much closer to the holy grail of "make games without programming"). It also has tons of quirks (why oh why can't I name flags!?) and the official forums are ridiculous. Despite this, I still like it and use it from time to time. Anyway, The 'NG edition' is basically like TGF2 but with the limitation you can only export your projects to be played on Newgrounds. Haven't checked it myself but from what I hear you have to go through two MochiAds before your game starts or something.
Deal breaker: said limitations (export to NG only, probably forced watching of ads).

PlayBASIC
Has a free edition, looks fast and straightforward.
Deal breaker: IDE is unfinished / buggy, the whole thing has an extremely unhealthy atmosphere - due to the number of actual users or actually lack of them it feels like working in somebody's (the guy who wrote PlayBASIC) living room. I know this last bit doesn't sound too informative but it'd take me more time to elaborate than for anybody curious enough to read this to click on the link and see for themselves.

Construct
This one has lots of vocal supporters! It's loosely based on MMF2 (cca 400$ version of above mentioned The Games Factory 2) and looks pretty nice.
Deal breaker: the students that wrote the first version moved on to Construct 2 (which will be a commercial software) since some parts of the original version are broken beyond repair (including a serious memory leak) so they decided it will be left in a perpetual v0.99 with just the basic fixes from time to time.

Hot Soup Processor
Japanese game maker, I liked a few games that were written with it so I checked it out.
Deal breaker: seems abandoned? I also found no tutorials. They must be somewhere, since apparently (according to wikipedia) it was used in Japanese schools to teach programming... but I haven't seen any. Maybe I gave up on digging too fast.

Edit: links.

[LVUER]

Deal breaker: the students that wrote the first version moved on to Construct 2 (which will be a commercial software) since some parts of the original version are broken beyond repair (including a serious memory leak) so they decided it will be left in a perpetual v0.99 with just the basic fixes from time to time.

Ha! I knew it ^_^ There's something wrong with Construct! I thought it's just me... (or my PC).

[Friar Tuck]

I like this engine: http://instead.syscall.ru/about/
INSTEAD was designed to interpret the games that are the mix of visual novels, text quests and classical 90'ss quests.

Inventory system, fast sprite system, cool dialogue system, scenes aka rooms, lua as script language, etc.
Ofcourse skins support.
Android, Windows and Linux.

Some games: http://instead-games.ru/index.php?page=all

[LVUER]

Just want to inform that now Unity is completely free (only for the Windows version though). Unity Indie is no more, but Unity (just Unity) is completely free, even for commercial project, be it personal or company usage AS LONG AS your annual gross revenues doesn't exceed US$100,000 (or if you are an entity with annual budget over US$100,000). Though the license say that Unity (free) is not intended for professional games (I guess it means AAA games). Oh, in case you wonder, there's no royalty and revenue shares either.

With this, Unity is perfect for me I'm definitely going to download this one and use it for a long long time... along with Game Maker.

Game Maker also have a free version now, though it's very limited compared to the full version.

[plaster]

Gamemaker gives out free licenses to the Studio version from time to time, since the free version has a lot of restrictions. It's 50% off this week.

Also -- the White Chamber and The Journey Down (scroll down there's a low-res one) are two other free Adventure Game Studio games of pretty high quality. I'd recommend them!

[Friar Tuck]

Also -- the White Chamber

In reality the White Chamber use Wintermute Engine: http://res.dead-code.org/doku.php/games:start

[anticulturist]

Thanks for posting about 'Instead'.

[mudora23]

My thoughts on game maker

From someone who has several years of experience with game maker, here's my opinion on it:

Pros:
- Powerful: The engine is aiming for 2D games in general (but also supports 3D), with it's own particle, shader, physics system, you can create some pretty stunning 2D games with it.

- Cross-platform: This is the biggest selling point for them. Once you created your game, you could export it to multiple platforms with minimal to no efforts. (Currently supports Win, Mac, Linux, Html5 (web), Android, IOS, Windows 8, Tizen, Xbox One, PSV, PS3, PS4.)


Cons:
- Windows Only for free users: With the Game Maker Studio standard version goes free last year, you can get most of the important features for free; however, on windows only. It can get very expensive if you want the game on many platforms.

- Not specific for RPG or VN games: Yes, you can create a 2D shoot them up or a platform-er without any coding knowledge in game maker. As for RPG or VN games? Not even close. It's no RPG maker. If you are relatively new to programming, don't even think you can create one without passive learning all the way from the basics. I've answered tons of questions from people who are new to programming and wanted to create RPG games in game maker, they most likely failed to do so.
As for those experienced programmers who already know C# / C++ / Java, game maker language (GML) is kind of like those… well a little…. They share the curly brace syntax at least. You would need a little time to learn GML.


Conclusion:

Worth it? It depends.

- If you are new to programming, you will likely need to spend hundreds of hours just to learn all the necessary skills for programming a decent RPG game…. not worth it. But if you are looking for a simple physics/object-oriented game? Give it a try!

- If you are an experienced programmer and want to create a relatively complex 2D game. Also, you only need it on windows or don't mind to pay a little to export it on other platforms. Then yes.