The variety of development tools used for creating games is so big that not being familiar with some of them or not knowing the specific requirements of your applications makesthe choice of a development tool or development environment nearly impossible.

A bad choice of a development tool might lead to huge problems in the implementation of the application. You might find it too difficult working with a very powerful tool, while you might not need all that functionality, or you may have chosen a more limited one that doesn’t have all the features you need to develop your game.

There are different types of tools with a view to purpose of the application – some of them are intended for game development in specific, others can be used for creating different types of interactive media, dynamic content, etc. Most of them are authoring systems that help you create some kind of specific content, but visual languages can also be used for creating such content, although it would be much more difficult.

The most popular tools for game development

Game Maker
http://www.gamemaker.nl/
Game Maker is a limited game development tool that allows creating small and relatively simple games without the need of writing any code. You can create nice looking games just using drag-and-drop actions and events. There is also a built-in programming language, which makes the program really flexible. Game Maker can be used free of charge

Game Editor
http://game-editor.com/
Game Editor is a game development tool thathelps you design games without knowing anything about programming. The way you develop the game is by setting actions fired by events.

Adobe Flash
http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/
Adobe is a development tool that allows creating interactive content, video, graphics, animation, websites, presentations, mobile content. It’s the most popular tool for creating animated online content as well as offline multimedia and presentations. The capability of using powerful Actionscript code allows the development of complex applications and games.