Making the Greatest Game Ever

[Vipershark]

you can easily do that with game maker

the problem is though
for the level of complexity you want, a keyboard and mouse is pretty much required

no console controller is complex enough to cover all of the required actions, and you'd need A LOT of menus

now that I look at it again, that wasn't your point
but an even more GUI based Game Maker clone wouldn't be complex enough
GM's D&D system is about as dumbed-down as you can get while still retaining some level of customization

which also leads to the coding part, where you can basically do whatever you want and also adding on new dlls and stuff to expand your possible functions
edit- while this is obviouslt for more advanced users, I think it'd be easy enough to teach someone to make an incredibly simple game using D&D

have you tried the catch the clown tutorial? anyone could do that, and it's done in D&D. Probably the only thing that would need dumbing down is some of the names of the code functions so that var_*** becomes variable_*** and is generally easier to understand, etc