I posted this in the game design forum first because I am a NOOB. Sorry.

Question in short form: I want to make a simple 2d game that has no sprites but only buttons you click to achieve goals, what are the best game creation programs for that in your opinion?

My Game Idea:

You are a blacksmith tasked with running a shop and earning a living wage. You develop your skills to improve your designs and learn how to create more and more difficult items as you learn how from your master initially and then as rewards for finishing certain requests.

Of course finishing tasks takes time. The game will be centered around prioritizing what you need and gaining skill.

The game creation program will need a way to create:

a 24 hour clock

buttons with in-game adjustable menus

a way to keep track of stats, an inventory system, what items the PC knows how to create, and what raw materials those items require.

Multiple "areas" for the PC to access on an overworld map. (I envision a map where you simply click a button to go somewhere like say, bank, store, etc.)

What simple to learn and preferably free options are out there?

There are quite a few free and readily options out there to help you begin creating your game. There are also two different ways you may approach it. There are drag-and-drop game creation tools w/ optional scripting such as Game Maker which uses their own custom scripting language, Game Maker Language, and there are also graphics libraries post a variety of different languages if you want to code it yourself. Allegro, SDL, SFML, OGL/D3D(I would not recommend these two for you as they are the more complex of what I mentioned), PyGame, Java has a built in graphics library, Windows has GDI you can use, etc.

I personally if I was just starting out coding I would go w/ Game Maker. It's drag-and-drop w/ the ability to write custom scripts or use pre-defined "actions". It has a built-in feature to create your own sprites/animations. It would suit your project very well. If you want to actually write the code though, I suggest Python and PyGame or you could try to pick up Java. Neither are very complicated. It all depends on how much work you want to "do yourself".

Something to keep in mind, often the lower-level the language is, the less restricting it is, but the more you need to do for yourself. Game Maker, for example, takes care of all the boilerplate code. It detects collisions, it renders, it receives input, etc. If you code your game, usually you will have to in some form (either directly or via some library function) set up the aforementioned items.

Allegro for example, a simple program w/ a single window that clears to black and flips the contents of the back buffer is as follow:

int main()
{
	al_init();

	ALLEGRO_DISPLAY *pDisplay = al_create_display(1024, 768);

	al_set_window_title(pDisplay, "Allegro App");

	bool running = true;

	while (running)
	{
		al_clear_to_color(al_map_rgb(0, 0, 0));

		al_flip_display();
	}

	al_destroy_display(pDisplay);

	return 0;
}

As you can see, you must manually set up a few prerequisite item. This is a lot simpler in terms of getting started than say D3D or OGL, Alllergro is actually a wrapper for some parts of D3D on Windows. So it all depends on how much control you want to have.

Hope I helped!

You could accomplish this just using HTML and a little bit of Javascript.

I always love to suggest Unity :D it's free and very versatile. It might not necessarily be the most simple option, however. If you're going for really simple and little programming, as stated above, Game Maker is great, as well as Construct 2. I haven't used either much, but from what I've seen and heard it can be quite useful for anyone starting out :)

Thanks everyone, I'll try out Game Maker.

You could try Godot.