So, I've been teaching my students a bit about game design, and we're using the tools at gamestarmechanic.com to design games, and how to find that perfect balance of difficulty and challenge.

The site is pretty cool, once you unlock items in the Quest mode, you can use those items to build either a top-down game or a platformer.  I built a game in it, that most of my students find extremely challenging and rage quit more often than not. =)

If you're up for a 2D platformer challenge, try out the game I made, Heightened Security. Do you find it too difficult?

https://gamestarmechanic.com/game/shared/100614/3af2412fb5c1a0bd74f8d4f8d13d6f38

Anyhow, thought you hobbyist game designers might be interested in the tool for making game prototypes with this. =)

cool thanks. keep pissing your students off.

I don't like the physics. But I like the art.

i'm already a member. i singed up when vgc advertised it.

Do you need to spend money to make anything complex? I gave it a quick try & it seems pretty basic.

Edit: It's easy to try though, you don't even need an email or facebook or anything.

srry i haven't tried to make anything. vgc has kept me busy and i'd forgot all about the site. it's been a yr. not. you may want to tye your account to a password though, just incase you forget your password. the way i read it, all you have to do is play games to unlock stuff.

Oh God those controls are bad! Right off the bat I died like five times from pressing space bar instead of x. This game has very "loose" controls. For me this is an un-fun challenge.

Some of the controls can be modified - movement speed, gravity, enemy speed. However at the start of the game, it tells you what the controls are ;)

Not drastically complex by modern gaming standards. There is a subscription version which unlocks a ton more resources, but I never went that route myself.