https://www.yoyogames.com/studio So I came across this last night while I was looking for some pixel art tutorials. This seems ideal for indie games, this and na game studio.
In the open-source front there's a moderate amount of pixel-art games made with OpenFL, but it requires programming knowledge: http://www.openfl.org/showcase/
As a game designer and artist, I have to say game maker is amazing. The only thing I regret is that I didnt start with it years ago. I started with unreal and unity (not counting modding) and in all this time I was always reliant on a programmer or a team, and now I can finally make my own games all alone, without anyone…
The other way to look at it is, if you wish to learn / code in C# starting to code in 2d is much easier then in 3d. GML resembles java so I didn't have much problem in understanding how things work. The only thing that is bad about GML coding is the coding structure ends up being something you made in NetBeans in a fast…