To say to not using any game engine was maybe exaggerating, but I believe it is important to understand the basic concepts. And when the goal is, to make a flappy bird like game, the canvas and some scripting would be a good start, I believe, if there is zero experience.

On the other hand, I also started with Adobes Flash. You could draw and animate and script right away ... and get awesome results right away .. without having to google html audio element.