Help with searching for game-making programs

[Nightfall Veilwing 1,138]

Hello, everypony. /)

There have been many fan games the brony community has made in the past 7 years, and I wanna contribute, too.

But here's the problem: I don't know jack about game-making, or even which program(s) to use, for that matter.

So, for those who have made fan games, what program would be the best to use if I want to make an elaborate game?

I plan on making 3 MLP games:

Stable System (Action/Puzzle)

This title is similar, in theme, to that of The Matrix and Portal/Portal 2. Everything starts our normal for Twilight, but as the day progresses, everything and everypony seem to glitch. And everything begins to turn into code and fall apart, then everything went black like a computer crashing. Twilight wakes up on a bed in a small room in an unknown location. For unknown reasons, Twilight's color scheme is different. Her new color scheeme looks like this. (Just so you know, the characters are anthro in this game.) Now Twilight is on a quest to figure out where and when she is. One thing's for certain: It may still be Ponyville, but it's no longer in the place she once knew and called home.

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Unnamed (Horror/Mystery)

This one is the only horror game among these 3 titles. In this game, Spike tries to find the source of an eerie cry that sounds like it's coming from a filly (roughly about the CMC's age) in the middle of the night. The search leads Spike to an empty and abandoned house that's at the edge of the Everfree Forest and the outskirts of Sweet Apple Acres. During your search (and eventual arrival at the old house), you find clues to who lived in the house years prior. You'll need your best puzzle-solving skills to figure out the mystery of The Sour Apple House.

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Paper Spike: The 6 Gem Keys (RPG)

This is the one I'm most exited about. It's based one the Paper Mario games (obviously). This game is about Spike coming across a retired treasure hunter that came to Ponyville and ran into Spike. He gave Spike a map that lead to each hidden location of the Gem Keys, artifacts that, according to the legend, unlock great treasures greater than anypony could imagine. Little does Spike know that he'd being fallowed by a group of treasure hunters, lead by Rich Hunter (tan earth pony) and his gold digger wife, Diamond Ring (white unicorn).

For this game's appearance, it's supposed to look like that everything is make out of paper, like in Paper Mario: Color Splash and in the newer South Park intro.

 

So, which program should I use for making these?

If you want to know anything else about these games, do ask.

[Adderbane 121]

Good games take a lot of work.  Complexity adds up fast.  A lot of game making tools limit the scope pretty harshly, so it's often hard to create what you envisioned.

That said, if you already know (or are willing to learn) a bit of programming, Unity can be a very powerful tool.  It handles a lot of the most complex systems; physics, 3D graphics and lighting, collisions, etc.  So all you really have to worry about is making the rules of the game itself mostly.  Plus there's a large library of assets available, and you can probably find pony models somewhere.

There may be simpler ways out there, but I think Unity is the best mix between simplicity and the ability to actually make ideas work.