Which freeware apart from game maker allows me to make games?

Answer 1

Microsoft just released their new XNA game development environment, based off of C# .net.

A decent knowledge of C# is necessary ahead of time, but there is a growing amount of support from Microsoft for the new product (it's currently only in Beta)

The great part is, once the "final" version is released, you'll be able to publish your games to Xbox 360 Live for owners of the Xbox 360 to download and play (pretty cool huh?)

I've been using it quite a bit since its release (earlier this week) and am getting used to the look and feel of it. It's definitly a fantastic learning tool, with the capabilities of doing both 2D and 3D games once you get in to it.