This IDE helps you to make your own games - not only sidescrollers. There is a sophisticated (but easy to use)  tile editor, functions to make animated tiles and sprites. The documentation is easy to understand  and provides a how-to for your first steps, showing you how to use everything. The community is always helpful, with the maker of sgdk showing up almost every day to answer all questions. The best thing: you can either script in C# - or you can use a well-designed rule-system to easily piece together your scripts.