@rachaelgdavies had studied the Art Track at FIEA, so didn't learn intense coding. The school was divided into 3 tracks (Art, Coding and Producers). All tracks had to do intro classes for coding but It was never a strong suit of mines XD These days however Unity3d and Unreal have lots of modular code templates in their shops, which come in handy if on your own/ smaller budget. I been dabbling on Unity 3d on the side, and have been using one of their adventure game templates to prototype on called Invector.
Both Unity and Unreal have free versions, Unity uses C# and Unreal uses C++ both have visual coders also the popular one on unity is playmaker, forgot the one on Unreal's name.
unity has a free 2d adventure creator which you might find interesting (never used the 2d adventure creator b4), Plyr would finally be a player
here's the 2d toolkit, it's also free. there's a free 3d one also-
had bought this one (above) a few years back, so been prototyping sick boy and a few projects with it (saves me having to code from scratch) it's a 3d game template made for 3d, 3ps, fps, and hack and slash games. Everything is modular and customizable via c#
Was working on another game prototype (still in very early stages) the Mc can bounce sound viration and throw it back at the enemy as a projectile. Literally took their chest item collection script, switched it to auto collect and to become active when creature roar, wall gets hit etc. But it shows how modular/ editable the game templates can be to suit personal needs. https://soundmancerprototype.blogspot.com/
Many thanks too, hearing you find the comic looking cool fun and real (hgh five)