The best "easy to learn, hard to master" that I know of is PICO-8. You can get up and running with a simple game incredibly fast. The entire IDE/Engine is a single program. You write all code, draw all sprites/maps, compose all music/SFX, and play in one place. You will be surprised with what people who have mastered it can create.

https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Such a great way to test out some simple game mechanic ideas.

I'd been "planning on building a game" for probably a decade. Pico-8 got me to finally "finish" a few. The integrated graphics and audio system is super useful for cobbling something together.

Unity and Unreal Engine are the only realistic options for 99% of indie developers. Yes, you can technically program your own game engine, but if you are asking advice for simple ways to make games, that is not the best option for you right now. There is a lot of really good education content for those two game engines. Most importantly, people use them to make and sell games.

More important than any particular route you take is merely sticking with it. The choice of game engine doesn't matter that much as long as you make and finish games with that engine. Everything else is secondary and mostly procrastination.

Try GameMaker or Construct. They are the more intro level tools that will let you get things done without having to learn too much.

After there is the big engines, Unity, Unreal, and Godot. They all have their ups and downs, but are the next level of complexity up from the previously mentioned tools.

If you're into specific niches there are sometimes purpose built engines for it, like RPG Maker. They are usually much less complex, albeit limited to specific kinds of games.

I enjoyed the articles on https://www.redblobgames.com/ a lot in the past. They are nice starting points for making a game.

Unity. Go download it and watch some tutorials on YouTube. I recommend someone like Brackeys. Pick a game making series and follow along. You'll very quickly get an understanding of how to do things and can go from there.

This is a popular enough way of doing it that it exists for most of the popular engines. Unity just tends to have the most.

You can start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j48LtUkZRjU&list=PLPV2KyIb3j...

There is the gamedev subreddit that contains plenty of helpful information and people.

Using a game engine like Unity you can create something pretty advances in a short time. There are tons of tutorials on YT. If you prefer a free game engine, check out Godot.

If you're looking at doing it "from scratch", you should really consider starting out small with something like Pong or Tetris. The best resource I know is Handmade Hero for that, tons of YT videos and huge community.

Guys, don't forget Godot, you can choose unity or Godot for 2D games, Godot is the 3rd popular engine today, and will become more popular in the future.