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Hi, thanks for the question. :) For a beginner, I would suggest Unity. It's completely free to start developing, and the coding can be kept to a minimum. There are also a bunch of tutorials available on YouTube and other sites for both 2D and 3D development. 

As for game artwork, it is okay to use other creators art, as long as you give them credit. If you are looking for an artist, you can look on sites like this, or even create a new topic in this forum. :) If there's one thing that years of Newgrounds games taught me, it's that stick man games can be just as fun as any other. I would focus on making the game fun to play, looks come later. ;) 

Thanks for the reply! Even though I had already started learning how to use Stencyl, I'll probably download Unity and check it out too. I have a great idea for a story (Probably going with a mix of 2D platformer and visual novel with some puzzles the player needs to solve in order to push the story narrative), so the programming and the visuals are gonna be my biggest hurdles, but I can tackle those when I get to them. Maybe some 8-bit art won't be too hard for me to come up with. Again, thanks for replying to me!

Oh, one more question: What about copyrighted music? Are we allowed to include that in the game, or must it be copyright-free?

Yes, you can include copyrighted music for this jam, as long as credit is given to the original artist. :) But if you plan on developing the game further in the future, I would highly recommend getting permission or changing the music. :)