No! If a development platform turns into something useful, the developer is going to want money for it :) This is seen again and again (and it does make sense.) Even KPL (phrogram) turned commercial.
For something free i guess one has to turn to open-source. C++, lua, python, (fill in list of BASIC dialects here as you see fit) but all these are just languages with no focus on games. So for games you will need some extensions, e.g. for c++ there are lots of "game" libraries such as allegro, SDL, kyra or other engines, python has PyGame, etc. etc… it's all a pain in the a**.
What to do, what to do. I don't know. Although i do find the demos that limit the size of the source code reasonable. One can get the feel for the program/language before buying. PureBasic does this, and Blitz, although Blitz does not create exe files in the demo version. But i think they are too expensive. PureBasic is now up to $99 which i think is steeeeeeep!
