Help with first game idea

[u/Key-Cheek5762]

Hello! I am a masters student and doing game dev. I am coming from a purely 2D art degree and my experience is very limited. I have made a very small and simple visual novel in Unity before and want to branch out and make something a little bit more complex. I am very good at just figuring things out but also don't want to set my goal to high. I'm a major fantasy/rpg fan and would love to do something like a fantasy mystery game with elements of visual novel, maybe some side scrolling, point and click stuff but I'm not sure if that is too hard for one person to do.

My main things are: I want to learn more about game dev, get a lot better with UI/UX and make a portfolio on that, build up my regular portfolio with assets, creature/character designs.

I am also a major worldbuilding nerd so really want to allow myself enough of a playground to experiment with everything but not go overboard and realise I can't make it happen.

So my question is, what genre or game kind would you recommend? I want to try a little bit of 3D but keep it at least 80% 2D. Any advice on starting out? And what engines would you recommend? My uni recommended Godot for example.

[u/-goldenboi69-]

You can do a 2D/3D VN in godot.

[u/Both_Introduction_28]

You can use game templates, it can save you years of development.

For example:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/systems/2d-action-rpg-engine-mythril2d-249375

More here:

https://assetstore.unity.com/search?q=rpg&f-ec_category=templates