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.