Hello everyone. Hope you've been more active than I've been, as I've only just tried starting.

I've been using Game Maker Studio 2 for my stuff so far, mostly out of experience with it and it's predecessors. The problem is that I can't export to Mac or Linux with it; that'd require hooking up machines running those OSes and I don't have the everything for that. Web export is also not an option as that's $150. I've been distributing the source for my games as sort of a solution, but it's not elegant at all.

So it may be time to look for some other game thing, even though I could make the game itself quite readily with GMS2.

What I'm looking to make will mostly be dragging, clicking and holding down stuff with the mouse so it's not complicated but a lot of stuff is meant to happen graphically. The things most closely fitting seem to be LÖVE and Renpy. I have no experience with the former and it seems a bit like I'd have to do everything myself, while the latter seems not intended for single-screen things that don't go anywhere. I think I'd have to bend it quite a bit to make it do what I want.

So, I'm not really sure what to use, but I'll need to draw stuff first so that buys me a little time. I could go and do the source thing again but that doesn't feel like it's in the spirit of things. Any thoughts?

Depends on what you want to make - the more already-a-genre your project is, the more likely there's an engine suited to it already. If you're okay with the coding aspect, LÖVE is indeed meant to be very good but I'd also suggest Godot. Godot has a drag and drop interface but you have to use their IDE. There's definitely less coding than LÖVE though.
You're welcome to send me a message on Discord/Telegram if you decide on Godot and need help (it's my go-to for games most of the time).

=shrug=

Forcing yourself to change your engine just because you only have the one possible export option seems counter-productive, I reread the jam page and it says "If at all possible, try to" release in non-windows exclusive.

I'd say go with what you know how to use and export in what you can.

Augh, I really don't like this about Game Maker's pricing model.  It effectively discourages releasing cross-platform, not for any technical reason, but just because they're holding the exporters hostage.  :(

LÖVE gives you lots of nice primitives and utilities, but yeah, it leaves you to do the actual Game Stuff by yourself.  Dragging things around wouldn't be too hard to build from scratch, but it would definitely take some work (and that's on top of learning LÖVE in the first place).  I know dragging is possible with Ren'py, but don't know any of the details.

You could maybe build it as a web thing, with JavaScript?  It sounds like you want to mostly have boxes arranged on the screen, which the web is pretty good at.  You wouldn't even need a real engine; just find a tiny library that makes dragging easier and slap it on some <img> tags.

Personally I do like that thing about Game Maker. Kind of a way to ask "Are you really sure you need HTML5/Android/iOS/Whatever export?"

Double really with how expensive the Android/iOS exporter is, though personally, even when I got it for GMS:1 back then with those humlble bundles, it just... went completely unused and forgotten.

Kind of a shame that Mac/Linux exports (which come included in the base pro version) do require computers with those OSes set up connected to the developing system.

I agree with Barreytor on sticking with something that's working.  If you have a way to make a game, and it does what you need, then clambering over to another platform mid-game-jam is probably more than you should bother with for now.  That said, I highly encourage you to try out LÖVE, or perhaps Godot, as both are cross-platform without paying for it.