Hi, I am a high school graduate. I am about to take around 8 months gap before joining an university. So I thought of trying game designing in the mean time as it is my dream since I was 9. I have basic knowledge of Visual Basic, HTML and an intermediate knowledge of C++. Since this period is a very short time for learning to program and then make a good game, I was thinking about picking up a good game engine that would allow me to focus on game designing. It will also be great if it allows me to make small alterations to suit my needs with writing big codes.

If your focus is game design, I'd recommend engines like Game Maker, Enigma, Construct Classic/2. The faster you can prototype, test your ideas, the better; performance and implementation shouldn't be an issue for you. At most, try to use Löve2D and other fast development frameworks, but avoid going to a lower level than this one.

Stay in a high-level context. Focus on the rules and design, the engine should just be a medium through which you'll expose your ideas, so the easier and faster the development is the faster you can move onto the next prototype.

I'll have a look at them. thanks for the reply.

I use Leadwerks (which uses Lua) and it's a great engine for fast prototyping of 3D as well. Has a flowgraph and a bunch of scripts that come with the engine to get you up and running with a basic FPS fast.