Is there life after Game Maker?

[FabianLC]

It's kinda unfortunate to see how Game Maker has went from being a great tool for both beginners and experts that just want to make games to something that, although it has some neat features (animated tiles and auto-tiling are a couple that stood out to me), doesn't seem to be made for beginners and hobbyists. Game Maker nowadays seems to have a rather high price, a free version that is rather restrictive, and such. I've been doing pretty good with Game Maker 8.1 and GameMaker: Studio 1 for quite a long time, but I have not even tried out GameMaker: Studio 2 and I'm not sure if it'd be worth spending about $100 for it or not. I have taken a look at a few other game-making tools a few times to see if there's an alternative that doesn't cost as much or is even free while being quite flexible.

Unity seems nice, being able to produce both 2D and 3D games, although the full versions seem rather expensive ($35 per month just so you can have the plus version? Really?). The free version doesn't seem to be so restricted, though, so it may not be so bad for those that just want to make fangames.

Unity is not limited, you only have to pay if you make profit with your games