I do a lot of 'from scratch' programming when I make games but I want a change of pace.
preferably a free engine if possible but all suggestions welcome.
You can try Blender 2.79’s Game Engine.
Not sure if it’s a good game engine, but it is free and coding is optional, not required.
Download a “previous version” of blender. (i.e. version 2.79).
When you open Blender:
Change these two things at the top of your window:
1) Change “Default” to “Game Logic”.
2) Change “Blender Render” (or “Cycles”), to “Blender Game”.
To test your game, press P while your mouse is over the main 3D View window.
P.S. Opening any blender assets you made in a newer version probably won't work. I just get an empty file.
Blender's old game engine not a great choice. It has poor implementation of game development tools (especially for game deployment and commercialization), and it's even been removed from Blender as of Blender 2.8.
I recommend if someone is still using Blender's game engine to switch over to Godot since it's own language GDScript is very similar to Python, it has better support for doing game development, and it's completely open-sourced! (Though, I'm hearing rumors on the ground of a group developing a game development environment for Blender 2.8, though it will not be worked on by the Blender Foundation directly.)
I'd recommend keeping to what you know. If you know C#, then Unity or Godot may be a great pick for you. Godot also supports C++ and it's own GDScript (similar to Python.) If you're more familiar with C++, you may want to look at Unreal. If you have a background in Java, Processing is a very easy interactive media framework and has it's own self-contained IDE to work with (though you can use other IDEs!). It even has the capability of doing 3D graphics! Though take note that it doesn't have physics nor collisions out of the box (sounds like a great programming challenge!) If you want a GameBoy styled game without any programming, then GB Studio would be a good pick, though keep in mind reading the documentation thoroughly to make sure your art and sound assets will work. While this is not exhaustive, these are the engines and frameworks I'm most familiar with.