>>724774750
Don't obsess over making something new, there's countless games that are called clones or reuse mechanics from some other game, that's how genres are created and how the medium evolves.
Before the FPS term was used, FPS games were just called DOOM clones, until enough DOOM clones got made that people called them FPS games. Before CoD got popular, it was called a Medal of Honor-killer but now the CoD-like FPS is it's own subgenre due to CoD's popularlity and nobody cares about MoH.
Today, there's many subgenres of FPS like: Arena Shooter (Quake, Unreal, TF2), CoD-like, Milsim, BR, Hero Shooter etc
Sonic was originally seen as a Mario clone, he was created because Yuji Naka played Mario 1 and liked how fast he could complete the levels so designed a Mario clone based on physics, speed, and paying attention to level design and setpieces to maintain your speed. Today, Sonic is his own subgenre of platformer with indies making "Sonic-likes".
The medium is always like this. Games used to be called (x)clone or (y)-killer but today they're called (z)-likes. When enough of these games are made, people define it as a genre.
The only thing that matters in your game is how you piece everything together as there's a diff between a '-like' game and a ripoff. See
>>724740987
Only reason people are mean to that is a Spyro-like just needs to have: mini-sandbox levels of collecting items, each level has challenges for variety.
Flit however is copying: artstyle, moveset (does a bat play the same as a dragon?), physics. It's just a reskinned Spyro and it's not a spiritual successor as the last Spyro game wasn't that long ago even though it was a remake.
Ripoffs are copies, '-like' games take mechanics from past games and do something new with them like how Sonic is different from Mario.
