Anyone heard of any good freeware adventure game maker programs? I know there's http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/, that I'd looked into last time I was one this kick, but I thought there were also a couple others and they each kind of had their own pros and cons.

What I was originally attempting was making a text game in http://www.inklestudios.com/inklewriter. The only problem I realized with that, however, was that you can't carry data over between stories, and what I kind of had in mind was an episodic sort of thing where a couple of variables would transfer between saves. (Nothing that's going to blow Mass Effect out of the water - I'm still a novice at all of this and don't want to get too ambitious with basically my first attempt, but I do want some continuity between "episodes." I thought it'd be a bit easier for me to break it down into more bite-sized chunks.)

I'm not looking to do anything terribly complicated, or learn a ton of programming. What I have in mind is still mostly a text game with illustrations. Probably not even any animation or sound to start out with (again, I don't want to get too ambitious yet. I can handle the illustrating, but never got much into animation.)

Really, anything that lets me do lots of text, has some basic and easy-to-learn scripting (I just need a couple of markers and counters to keep track of things, with a few logic variables at certain key points,) and most importantly is fairly quick and easy to learn.

I figured the BSG community has a pretty intelligent and varied community, and that maybe some of you guys might have some opinions on some good programs, maybe save me a bit of time from using the "wrong" one?