This will sound a bit harsh, but I would seriously question if games are worth this kind of time sacrifice. They're an incredibly saturated market, and Unity /

This will sound a bit harsh, but I would seriously question if games are worth this kind of time sacrifice. They're an incredibly saturated market, and Unity / Unreal dominate the engine space so will be difficult to compete without brilliant marketing, business skills, partnerships, etc. And it doesn't sound like there's much time in the schedule away from coding for developing those kinds of skills. I'd question how much benefit games are doing society too (or at least whether it needs more of them) and whether your passion and focus could be put to better use? Full disclosure, I spent a lot of time myself on a game that didn't get much traction - I'm proud of it and it taught me a lot, but I do think, even if successful, I could have done something more beneficial with that time (it took a lot longer than I expected). Like someone else mentioned, there's a high chance, just due to market realities and the crowdedness of the space, that this code ends up forgotten in a github repo somewhere, even if it's technically brilliant. Be sure to get people involved early and ensure that it's getting some traction, and that the market exists (financially or attention-wise) - and give yourself some go / no-go decision points along the way so you don't sink too much of your life into something perhaps nobody wants. The book "The Personal MBA" has some good heuristics for navigating that kind of stuff.