Same, Allegro was very impressive, and I built a little game in it. However, I remember I got stuck on something that I didn't quite fully understand at the time. Hell of a lot of fun though.
Re SDL - exactly! Same path.
It's been years since I wanted to play around making a game. I was thinking of building something in the love 2d framework now. What do you think of that?
Yeah, that and it wasn't as low-level as SDL. You didn't have to manage your draw instance, textures, screen flipping, frame locking/time deltas etc. It was much more conducive to the paradigms of what a game loop actually looks like.
But, for those same reasons, if you did something crazy (like I did with my first isomorphic engine), it could quickly get unmanageable with resource leaks.
Nowadays, I just recommend raylib, if you want a more "game"-oriented (vs "graphics"-oriented) library. I just wish someone would expand the docs so it wasn't as difficult for new gamedevs to jump in.
Years later I learned SDL/SDL2 and found them much much easier.