Greetings,

Once upon a time, maybe 15 yrs ago, I made a really simple (but effectve) point and click adventure game for my niece. It was simply a bunch of photos of our house, connected to one another by a link you could click on, and in some areas there might be a key she could find, to open a door she later finds, and she could collect hidden objects she discovers and save them in her inventory. That kind of thing...a couple things had some animation, but basically it was like walking around our house by clicking from one photo to the next. I want to make a similar super-rudimentary game like that is basically an Easter egg hunt. I see there are some capable free game creation programs available; can anyone recommend a relatively easy, free one that would be best suited to the kind of basic'click-from-photo-to-photo'experience I have in mind?

Thanks!

Otherchuck

Adventure Game Studio

I have never used it but there are some adventure games (very simple ones and in html) made with Twine. Most of them are "choose your own adventure" games.

Here you have some game examples: https://itch.io/c/314317/twine-examples

This is way too big a topic. Just do a search for best games engine and you will see thousands of recommendations and suggestions. It’s up to you to do your research and find out what works for you.
Unity is one of the big engines, it can do 3d and 2d, uses c# for scripting, and has a ton of tutorials and help and pluggins etc.
Unreal is the other big engine, much like the above, but c++ scripting.
Both have a free version to try out, both are large and capable (proven).
There are other commercial ones out there.
There is also Godot, this is free engine, can do 3D, but has good focus on 2d. Pretty powerful for something completely free. It uses a form of python for scripting, or you can hold with c#.

There are lots of others out there. Even some more which are drag and drop, personally I don’t really rate those, but the I am a coder.

Some questions to ask yourself:
2d or 3D?
What scripting language?
Are you a coder, an artist, a designer etc.
Do I want transferable skills, eg. Learning c# would allow you to use several engines, and do c# coding, where learning a specific engine might construct what you can do in the future.

If it was me I would start with something like godot, because it’s free, and the scripting language is pretty simple.

Yes, but as normal that really doesn’t help on specifics. That list shows unreal in the same list as cocos2d. The two are as far apart as you can get in game engines. Aimed at different platforms, for different types of development, using different paradigms. Not to mention there is at least two on there I have never heard of, and blitz3d which is ancient. This is the problem with the way of looking, far better to fix down a list of things you need and know about and then match tech to those requirements. Just asking for random suggestions will produce thousands of links, reference material etc which will waste the OPs time reviewing, I know I have been there many times on this.

I also recommend Adventure Game Studio.

It's free, and it's designed to make adventure games, which sounds like it's what you're looking for.

I made an adventure game using Adventure Game Studio in December last year. And if I can do it, anybody can. ( :

https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/ags/

I actually think that making your game as a web application could work. HTML lets you easily display an image, even some animated GIFs if you need them, and you could handle any game logic you need with JavaScript. HTML image maps will handle all the logic involved in making certain areas clickable. So yes, I would develop this game as a web app, since the browser seems ideally suited to what you've been describing.

The only software that you need is a web browser and a text editor (the latter for writing your HTML and JavaScript).

It's not free (€49,-), but Visionaire Studio might be what you're looking for:
https://www.visionaire-studio.net/?lang=en