I tried out Gamemaker and there were some things that I liked, but my dislikes outweighed them.
I did a search for game making programs and I found Stencyl, which seemed like it had some promise, but their "stealth mode" pretty much killed any enthusiasm that I had for the project.
So I did some more google searches for game making programs and eventually I found Construct. Honestly, I didn't have much hope for it since I had never heard anyone in any forums even mention it before.
I was very pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get started with the learning process, and the fact that it had hardware acceleration from the beginning was a huge plus.
I was really sold with Construct's awesome community of knowledgeable and helpful (and funny) people, though.
I've been making slow progress with my first serious attempt at a game (inspired by Puzzle Bobble) but hopefully I'll have it ready by next month. I really want to contribute something worthwhile to the site.