I made it in gamemaker. thanks, I'm proud of how the checkpoint select looks! really wanted to highlight Evan's art as much as I could...sexy opposing hands...
gamemaker makes certain things easier but you still have to do so many things from scratch that honestly for a beginner I'd recommend rpgmaker, which is what I use nowadays. it's just FUN and you can make a guy walk around and talk to stuff INSTANTLY. and if you want to put your own graphics in, you can open the default tilesheets/sprites in your favorite image editor and see exactly how to edit or replace them. and then you can export your game to browser and anyone can play it!

main thing is that rpgmaker needs plugins to really work, but it has a ton of good ones and I really recommend it as someone's first videolagamaker experience. other engines might be more technically flexible but that immediate feeling of playing with dolls and painting the map and having a preset example of all the different elements of a game, is a great introduction.

RPG Maker MV is on sale for 12 bucks right now, and goes low as 8. It is the previous one in the series and has the most resources/plugins available for it. The newest one, MZ, is catching up, and the plugin space is really good for it now (and there’s a prog to make MV plugins work in it). I got MZ for like 30 something (never buy an rpgmaker unless it’s on sale). The new features like plugin commands+movement preview+event list save a lot of time, but either version is good for a beginner! good luck videolagist...