Thread: Is XNA overkill for my project?

I've been wanting to make a 2D RPG, about the quality of Gameboy Advance - nothing big. XNA boasts about it being THE solution for game developing on .NET, but installing it puts stuff like Xbox 360/Windows Phone testing/deployment tools on my computer in addition to PC tools.

I'm wondering if it's possible to accomplish my goal without XNA, because not only do I dislike consoles and smartphones, it'd be more prerequisites for the end user to install.

I've also tried C++ but SDL seems like a low level mess. On the other hand, XNA just appears to be too much on top of what I need.

SFML... I'll have a look then. Never heard of it.

It looks pretty sweet, but I'm curious if VC 2010 can use the 2008 libs? I see no source download and would probably mess up trying to compile it.