icecheetah

So I've gotten involved with the Extra Credits Holiday Game Jam and I got thinking about why it is that in my hobbyist gamemaking I've found myself preferring things that are less newbie friendly.
More under the cut.

Even when I wasn't that great at programming I found RPGMakerVX ace stifling, and a few months later I found Gamemaker Studio liberating and prefect to use even though I had only basic experience with C like languages and so was learning GML from the ground up. And when I found... problems with Gamemakerstudio (including the cost of keeping up to date, problems setting up a save system, and how... complicated it is to make games for OSes different from your own) I looked to love... or rather... LÖVE

LÖVE is a framework. While with Gamemaker studio it's possible to make at the very least a functioning game with no programming knowlege (maybe even a good one) and it has a lot of in-built features, LÖVE gives you nothing. It's based on LUA, a language I had had no experience with before.

Witin a fortnight of trying it out I was able to make this game Also for an Extra Credits Game Jam.

And I'm not even sure I could re-create that game in Gamemaker studio. And at the time I found LÖVE I'd been trying and failing for like 6 months to create a save system in Gamemaker. A thing I was able to work out how to do in an HOUR for On bad days she's pure white.

I don't know why, but it seems like less is really more for me, when it comes to tools to make games with. For me, simple is starting from the near blank slate LÖVE offers rather than having any sort of template, no matter how malleable.
I wonder if this is where it ends or in a few years I'll be writing about how, IDK, Assembly is far better for me or going right down and manipulating the bits in machine code is the best ever (good luck distributing THAT future me).