Yeah, I'm using Construct 2 and I didn't use a template. Unfortunately I didn't watch any YT videos (I did think about making a tutorial/behind the scenes video at one point, maybe I'll pick up on it someday), so I can't recommend any. I learned as I went on with the project by asking my friend, looking up tutorials on scirra.com or discovering things on my own.
You could watch/read some tutorials if you're just starting up, it's not necessary, I did just fine without them, but that's probably more time-consuming. I don't really have any tips, but I can tell you that starting your own project and learning as you progress with it is the most fun. I wouldn't bother with fancy graphics and animations just yet too. You don't have to plan out everything if you just want to make a basic game in order to learn Construct 2, but it certainly is good practice.
Senzo would kill me if I didn't mention Love2D. I don't have any experience with it, but C2 has some problems (which aren't that big of a deal for simple games, but can become a huge pain in big projects), for example it doesn't like high resolution images, the main export method for desktop applications - nw,js - has a fair share of issues too. An empty project still weighs 50+MB, compared to other solutions it's pretty limited, and it has some weird bugs, like crashing after autosaving ~50 times or the game slowing down for no reason after some time, even if literally nothing is happening. None of these problems occur when playing in browser. Obviously there's a low chance of you having the same problems, I just want to say that it's not perfect. According to Senzo, Love2D doesn't suffer from those issues, but you would have to learn LUA, it's not a click & drop game creator.
I'm not sure if this was any useful to you, I'm not really good at teaching other people, but if you need help with anything in particular, I'll be glad to help.
Also employee management is planned!