Can someone recommend a beginners game designing program?

I really enjoi gaming alot and have to say that making a game i believe would be cool. something to share and have fun with. classically i have been better at older games though as time progressed in my life there were newer ones that came out i wasn't so bad at either. 

what im looking for here is something more of a platform based type of creator. free if possible and something i can experiment with and get to know to help further ideas. graphic wise it doesnt have to be anything extroadinary and of course i would love to be able to add music.

input here is much appreciated. thank you!

There are not really any free Game Greater program's out there. There are ones that you can try before you buy. Ones like Game Maker or try GameSalad witch I think is free I am not sure. 

Unity is great, simple to use, and free. Of course you would have to understand how program in Unityscript, C# or Boo.

If you're looking for something with built in functions though, all I know of is GameMaker. The free version is pretty limited and always superimposes a "made with gamemaker lite" stamp on the screen if I recall correctly. Also when you get a program with premade scripts, your game designing abilities will be very limited.

GameMaker is definitely what you're looking for if you want a good power ceiling and the easiest road. There's others out there, but if you're dabbling in game design, then GameMaker is the nicest way to be introduced to simple game design.

I'm going to piggy back on what others have said... GameMaker Studio is a good beginner's programming tool. I got my copy for free a long time back, but I think that was on special offer.

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Another thing you may want to consider, even though it's not platformer based is RPG Maker (pretty much any of them from 2k3 onwards.

It's another tool that can help you understand more about the game making process, at an extremely base level. RPG Maker centralizes a lot of the stuff, so it's easy to work with, and it helps give you a scale of all the things that need to go into a game and event creating. But again, this is a money software, and it doesn't even help much if you want to make a platformer, like you seem to want to. It's more an off topic recommendation.

I'd suggest Game Maker Studio or BYOND. They're both pretty easy to use, BYOND being the simpler one.
Definitely check them out!

It really boils down to a few things.
+Budget
+Willingness to learn a new language

Of course there's a little more involved, but those are what I'd consider the basics. For a free game creation program, you're not completely out of luck.

Game Maker is very user friendly with its drag-n-drop interface. I believe the newest version does require a $99 upgrade from the basic, which does limit the maximum amount of things that can be placed into your project. For starting out though, the basic version will probably be enough to let you learn the do's and dont's of Game Maker. (I do highly recommend attempting to learn GML. It's probably the second easiest programming language to learn in my opinion)

Unity is very nice, can make solid games, but requires learning a language such as Javascript or C#. Unity also has a huge asset store to help kick start your development or inspire new ideas.

BYOND (Build Your Own Net Dream) is a nice, easy to learn, game development software. From what I remember, it's mainly focused on multi-player games. It uses it's own programming language, DM, and from what I remember: it's the easiest language I learned. GML from Game Maker is a very close second though. The thing here is, BYOND does not feature the drag-n-drop, so you must learn the language.

RPG Maker is also a fun, easy to use, game developing program. It's limitation is that it is pretty much limited to RPG's. Shocking, I know. The user friendliness of this is, in my opinion, unparalleled. I played around with this program in my younger days, and it's what got me started on wanting to actually learn how to program (I went RPG Maker -> BYOND -> Game Maker -> Unity). If you're feeling like a champion on RPG Maker, you can learn Ruby to fiddle with the code - though I believe the base code is more than enough for most RPG idea's.

Game Salad is a good starting point, and was free last time I checked. I don't remember all the features honestly, as I only used it on my Macbook (Which I only used for about a month). From what I do remember, it was user friendly and felt aimed towards those who are new to game design. If it was put up against Game Maker though, I'd have to say go with Game Maker. That's an opinion, so it can still be worth checking out.

Stencyl - The Newbie's dream of a flash game creation tool - is a reality. I honestly love Stencyl. It's a easy to learn and easy to use flash game development software that's free. I like the way it's designed because it seems like you don't need any programming knowledge to make your project, but it's actually teaching you what's going on with it's clever puzzle-piece type system. It also has it's own market, like Unity, so you can get some cool scripts to help you out. I will say, their market was much less populated than Unity's though.

All of these are awesome, free game development programs. They each have different things that will satisfy different people. If you only want to make RPG's, get RPG Maker. If you primarily want to make flash games but you don't have time to learn C#, get Stencyl. If you want the freedom to do whatever you want while still not needing to learn a language, Game Maker is your guy. Multi-player only kind of guy? Byond is for you. How about you want to learn and think the only limit should be your imagination? You my friend, need Unity.

I know this post was lengthy, but I wanted to put some of my experience, and I hope it will shed some light on these guys (Seriously though, Stencyl and Unity are awesome). I hope you take what you'd like out of this post, and I can't wait to play your new game!

Skilledtree : I agree with you on all of these. Good work on the post!

Unity - Easy to use, free. The catch: Coding is necessary.

Stencyl - Easier to use, also free. There's not a lot of flexibility, but it has some of the easiest coding ever. The catch: It can only be uploaded onto flash sites like Kongregate and Newgrounds (but they do still pay you. I've gotten about $1 from Stencyl games).

Unreal Engine - This is what they use for tons of games, including but not limited to the Mass Effect series, Mortal Kombat X, Kingdom Hearts III, and the Rainbow Six: Vegas games. Unreal Engine 4 (the latest) is now free. There is basically endless possibilities, and coding is optional. You can even do mobile/phone games. The catch: The layout is extremely complicated. All I know how to do is change colors of things. (so it wouldn't be beginner. it's easy but at the same time you need to know how to navigate, which is way harder than it seems). Another catch it that you'll probably need a good computer, plus it takes up a lot of space. The game engine itself is 3 GB, but if you make a game it could get much higher.

There is RPG maker 2k3, which is what I use.