> hence imo in the beginning, it's best to recreate existing games with atmost a small twist
...if your goal is to do game development.
If your goal is to do game design, though, then the place to start is making
paper prototypes of your game mechanics.
Almost anything turn-based can be prototyped on a tabletop with stuff you have lying around the house, and some rules about how you and your friends should move things.
(For something like an RPG, you may want to write a few little calculator scripts for calculations the game would hide from the players, to run on a laptop at the table, just so everyone doesn't get dragged down doing hours of math that wouldn't actually be part of a player's experience of the game. But "a calculator script" is still a far cry simpler than a game engine!)
Reflex-based video games are harder to prototype, but can often be tested "by analogy" to physical-movement games. Think: testing a design for a new FPS, by designing the mechanics as a set of LARP-y mods over paintball/airsoft/lasertag.
For a reflex-based video game where the player avatar is expected to be superhuman (e.g. most platformers/adventure games), you might not be able to test the mechanics directly, but you can at least create paper rubrics — e.g. threat-radius circles for attacks. You can then do level design by building physical dioramas out of blocks (Lego — esp. Technics, to have parts of the diorama move — is great for this!) and then "testing" using your paper rubrics to ensure each course is at least possible. This isn't so great an idea — unlike the previous prototyping strategies, this one won't really indicate whether your game idea is fun to play — but it's at least something you can do to iterate on an existing game concept without constantly having to program in each new marginal idea.
The only kind of game that's near-impossible to prototype without actually programming anything, is an "artsy" game where the mechanics play with lighting / mirrors / illusions / etc. in a way that doesn't line up with things that are physically possible in the real world. So... don't try to design one of those as your first game. :)
...if your goal is to do game development.
If your goal is to do game design, though, then the place to start is making paper prototypes of your game mechanics.
Almost anything turn-based can be prototyped on a tabletop with stuff you have lying around the house, and some rules about how you and your friends should move things.
(For something like an RPG, you may want to write a few little calculator scripts for calculations the game would hide from the players, to run on a laptop at the table, just so everyone doesn't get dragged down doing hours of math that wouldn't actually be part of a player's experience of the game. But "a calculator script" is still a far cry simpler than a game engine!)
Reflex-based video games are harder to prototype, but can often be tested "by analogy" to physical-movement games. Think: testing a design for a new FPS, by designing the mechanics as a set of LARP-y mods over paintball/airsoft/lasertag.
For a reflex-based video game where the player avatar is expected to be superhuman (e.g. most platformers/adventure games), you might not be able to test the mechanics directly, but you can at least create paper rubrics — e.g. threat-radius circles for attacks. You can then do level design by building physical dioramas out of blocks (Lego — esp. Technics, to have parts of the diorama move — is great for this!) and then "testing" using your paper rubrics to ensure each course is at least possible. This isn't so great an idea — unlike the previous prototyping strategies, this one won't really indicate whether your game idea is fun to play — but it's at least something you can do to iterate on an existing game concept without constantly having to program in each new marginal idea.
The only kind of game that's near-impossible to prototype without actually programming anything, is an "artsy" game where the mechanics play with lighting / mirrors / illusions / etc. in a way that doesn't line up with things that are physically possible in the real world. So... don't try to design one of those as your first game. :)