GameDev Studio is an alternative to Gamemaker that is completely free. The applications that it produces are powered through an open source engine, combined with Irrlicht (3D rendering engine) and OpenAL (Sound Engine), all programmed in C/C++. They are all also cross platform, and a linux port is in progress. …

Gamemaker is a really cool application, but runs on a closed source engine, and is not the fastest thing around. That got me thinking, why not make my own gamemaker? That's exactly what I went ahead and did, and almost a year later I have GameDev Studio.