When it comes to calculator languages, there are pretty much four options.

TI-BASIC is the one that you're probably already familiar with. Slow, but very good for math.

Hybrid TI-BASIC is an interesting one. By running a certain App when running TI-BASIC programs, the programs can be expanded with new functions. Most of the functions allow you to do things such as drawing a lot of graphics very quickly and saving data to appvars. Hybrid TI-BASIC is definitely something I recommend if you don't want to learn a completely new language such as Axe or Asm, since those can be very complex. If you want to start using hybrid TI-BASIC, I recommend Doors CS.

You said earlier that you have already tried to learn Axe, so I don't really have a lot more to say about this. It gets very close to the speed as Asm, while being simpler than Asm and harder than TI-BASIC.

Asm (which is the same thing as programming in hex) is very low-level and tricky, although it gives you access to pretty much everything there is. Asm should generally be programmed on a computer - there's not much on-calc editing support. Axe is a good replacement for Asm unless you need exactly every resource that the calculator has, since Axe actually does compiles your code into what an Asm program is like.

Game Maker is good for learning and making short games, but can be hard to do large projects in it. Games tend to run slowly, and Game Maker was never really designed for programs that are not game-like.