@coolboymew @lonestarr @Owl @noyoushutthefuckupdad The indie success stories you hear about are either games filling a void (Palworld), or games that do something new/unique. Even the short term success of early indie "art games" faded out as the clique's influence faded.

Nobody is going to care about another 3d platformer trying to mimic the same Nintendo games with trans flags and every character having pronouns and some mental disability, except for a small niche audience on Twitter.com and someone craving more slop. Those developers have the issue of being pigeonholed so hard that they end up making slop, and before the DEI stuff being added in these games had the issue of being samey.

Wow, you're making a Sonic influenced game that adds little new. That's really cool, but you can fire up Sonic 3 in an emulator.