I love love2D. It's really a breath of fresh air. I've made many little games and prototypes with it. Lua is fun, and the doco is great. I highly recommend it as a very first dive into game programming.

If you're looking in that realm I also have to mention RAYLIB [1]. It might remind you of the XNA days, except it runs on many platforms and it actually works! (sic.) It's a Borland C style one-file include with some serious power. It's also a ton of fun until you segfault 3 mins into gameplay and you have no idea why. But then you can only blame yourself!

Final plug is of course PICO8. Very different style once again but so much fun[2]! Simple, cheat-sheet style programming, with all batteries included (pixel/spritesheet editor, mini DAW). And the productivity might surprise you, as you don't agonise for days on your third redesign this month.

All of these have vibrant, helpful, communities. You can't go wrong for fun.

[1] https://www.raylib.com/

[2] https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

> Final plug is of course PICO8.

Cannot not mention a Tic80. It is a FOSS alternative to PICO8.

Main differences are: 16:9 aspect ratio, no cpu limits and many languages to tinker with: lua, js, moonscript, ruby, squirrel, wren, fennel, janet, wasm, ... and just recently - a Python support was added.

https://tic80.com

https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80