there's both pros and cons to both punching above and below one's weight, in terms of programming ability. I learned a great deal from working on overly-ambitio

there's both pros and cons to both punching above and below one's weight, in terms of programming ability. I learned a great deal from working on overly-ambitious projects—both what to do, and, more importantly, what not to do—but it wasn't until much later that I learned the value of making something that seemed, to me, to be "well below my skill level". these days, I can't advocate strongly enough for programmers, especially aspiring game developers, to first set out to do as you say and recreate a simple, already existing game first, then play around with modifying its rules, making its presentation more spiffy, and so on. people often get enamored with success stories like, "well, [indie game you've heard of] was the first game project [creator] ever worked on, and he spent years working on it and nothing else, and now it's popular and successful and everyone you know has heard of it, so why shouldn't I just go about things the same way?" well sure, you can try to go about things the same way, but there's very, very little guarantee of success in doing things that way—not just in terms of sales or popularity, but in terms of even just actually finishing making what you set out to make. it's often surprising just how much work it takes to implement everything necessary—even for a seemingly very simple, minimal game—and going through the process of figuring out what is needed to make it, and then making it, is an absolutely invaluable learning tool. this is especially true if you've never done any sort of game design before. some people like to make video games by "paper prototyping" first, and while this is certainly an option, I find that the best, most interesting games are made by a programmer or team of programmers who have an idea, start formalizing said idea into code, and then sort of "discover" the rest of the game's design by exploring the possibility space that the formalized initial design idea provides, by playtesting and writing more code. but all of this is a lot easier once you have a few finished small game projects under your belt, and learned some of the basic game development insights along the way.