There are many good engines for making games such as Game maker or unity. I would recommend starting with game maker, then move up to learning programming with sdl.

A game engine can be very difficult depending on what capabilities you want it to have, for example: if you want 3d graphics, it will make things way more difficult, 2d graphics not so much, but thats just one aspect of a game engine. You should generally try to learn how to program before learning how to make a game engine, probably years of experience.