Do you know any good game development software?

[MisterBork]

 Hello, I want to make a 2D platform game, and I can't find a software that suits me.  I tried Game Maker, but it looks too simple, and that confuses me, and AGS is really not very suitable for more fast paced games. I'm using the Unity 3D engine for now, but making a 2D sprite based game there isn't very good. Do you know any 2D softwares that use JavaScript or C# and aren't too expansive? (And please, none of the "Visual Programming" ones, I'm looking for something for grown-ups)

[Gurok]

LOVE 2D
It uses Lua (warning: has great power). It runs on a variety of platforms and people are writing some nice libraries for it that can do some of the grunt work for you.

NodeWebkit
If you really want to write Javascript, you could probably make a game with this. It has some shortcomings, but you can also leverage a lot of Node libraries. I had some troubles developing an engine in it, but I believe if you stick to canvas (which I didn't), it's quite good.

Both of those options would probably require you to build most of the underlying platform game engine yourself. :/ I can't think of anything more 2D platform related that I'd recommend.

Also, both of my recommendations are pretty much bring-your-own-IDE. For me, that's commonly a text editor like TextPad or Notepad++ with rudimentary compiler integration.

[Ghost]

There also Construct Classic- very similar to GM in general layout but a bit more sophisticated when it comes to effects and interactions:
http://www.scirra.com/construct-classic

The software is no longer in development (C2 has taken that place) but I had a lot of fun with it.

Since you explicitely ask for something supporting C#, XNA is also worth a try. Yes it is also no longer in development but it's free, it works, and it gets the job done.

[Crimson Wizard]

Love2d is good. Learn Lua and create games in 5 days (sort of).
http://love2d.org/
All you need is a notepad.

[Calin Leafshade]

Should I just put my love for love2d and lua in my signature? Probably would save time.

[Sslaxx]

2D and 3D development environment: http://www.godotengine.org/wp/ - still under heavy development and its documentation needs work, but free and open source.

[MisterBork]

Thank you all, I will give a try on these suggestions, but I really liked the look of Love2d, I will try to learn Lua, since it doesn't look so hard for me.

[amateurhour]

Give game maker another shot. I moved over to it earlier this year and while it's initial gui is very "drag and drop pre made code" almost no one actually uses those functions. It has it's own scripting language like AGS/Unity/etc which is pretty complex.

Also it's free now, which is nice, and they just opened a resource store to compete with Unity and there's some good stuff out there.

Like I said, I just got into it about six months ago but I've already made engines for shmups, a VERY basic point and click adventure engine which is still buggy as hell but at least now I can make PnC games for HTML5 and mac, a platformer engine (of which there are another hundred out there for free, so it's nothing special), and a beat-em-up final fight style engine.

It really is versatile.

[bgordebak]

I looked for a good open source 2D game engine for a long time. Although there are some engines, like Enigma which is similar to and compatible with Game Maker, I think Love2D is the best.

Not very good for hiding your source code though, but none of them is really. You can find a decompiler for anything.

Believe me, I looked for every game engine under the sun, and couldn't find a better one than Love2D.

[Mouth for war]

I own multimedia fusion 2 and 2.5 to develop an action rpg like zelda and it is amazing for making platform games too...No codewriting whatsoever. Everything is made with conditions you put in a grid. You can do a lot with this program. Sure it has some disadvantages...like that no room is automatically savestated if you leave (AGS is a lot better with that) so you must control every change with global values and/or counters. You have to manually create your savesystem but it is not difficult...just timeconsuming if you're making a bigger game. If you can see past those things you have a nice little program there. I saw you didn't want programs for kids but it can do a lot. If anyone disagres with me, it's because they didnt bother to learn the software ;-)

[Mehrdad]

Yes.Multimedia fusion 2 and now Clickteam fusion 2.5 is really fast for make any genre of games .specially platformer games.Anythings is visual and you don't need write a single code too.So if you like make games in minute without coding it's best choose in my opinion.please see below link for rate of 2d game engines:
http://www.slant.co/topics/341/~what-are-the-best-2d-game-engines

[xil]

Stencyl is pretty perfect for what you want but you'd have to work around the fact it's primary focus is non-programmers. But as a grown up it is pretty easy to just insert your own custom code and bypass the kids mode .

[FatLarry]

The one addition to all those mentioned is the Mighty Editor http://mightyfingers.com/editor-features/ . It's coming out some time now i think. As far as I can work out, what is already available suits me very well as comes with guidelines and tutorials as well - easy to learn. But, you know, people are different and skills are too

[InCreator]

I tried Game Maker, but it looks too simple

wha-

I don't even understand what that means. GM can do everything, compile to everything, and no, it's not "too simple" at any level.
You probably looked at all those "make something do something" drag & drop icons and thought that that's all there is. Nope. Icons are to help absolutely green people, like schoolkids to get general idea what can be done and should be done.

Nobody doing anything serious or even semi-serious uses those. Only icon you ever need is "execute a piece of code".
Also, you can make your own AGS, with almost full functionality in GM in bare days. I don't think there's anything more powerful, logical and capable out there right now. GM has gone long way since 1999, just like AGS.

I suggest you to try again and dig deeper with GM. Youtube offers a good start, since GM is probably the engine that has most amount of tutorials, examples and otherwise resources out there. Even more than Unity.