Not sure who said it, and I don't remember the exact quote, but a lot of greatness and originality has come out of people attempting to replicate their idols and failing miserably, ending up with a result that could only be their own. Go out and screw up and everything will be fine. Maybe.

I think there is a balance to find. One of the best pieces of advice I ever read was by someone from the Crypt of the NecroDancer team (I think the main creator) in regards to making a marketable game versus making your passion game and he was like we came up with 10 ideas we were excited about then picked the most marketable one to make into a game (Crypt of the NecroDancer, which as far as I know was pretty successful.)

Of course "marketable" isn't "unique" but he basically went on to say that a big part of why they went with Crypt of the NecroDancer was because it stood out and they knew because of that the press would talk about it and people would get excited about it and yada yada.

So I have a Trello I post whatever game ideas I come up with that really excite me and right now there are 7 game ideas on there (not including my current game of course) so by the time it comes to game 2 there will probably be 10 or so to choose from. And while they're all exciting enough to me from a dev point, I do think about which ones would actually stand out the most in the indie landscape...

Of course none of them are SUPER ORIGINAL. In fact a lot of my ideas basically come down to "it's like Game X, BUT..." or "it's like Game X and Game Y had a baby..."

@J.K. Riki

Yeah, you don't have to be first in a genre to do it best either. Alone in the Dark was the first series to do that style of survival horror, but Resident Evil and Silent Hill did it much better soon after.

@Hinph

Good point.