Did I just waste 3 years?

You got half decent at a whole bunch of skills, which you can reapply. I'd say it was equal to going to a school for this, but not an exceptional school. It's a start, and it's a toolset.

Me and my brother make games. I do a brainstormy intuitive thing, and he builds stuff brick by brick. He has a tendency to decide things like 'I will build an Asteroids', build the skeleton of such a thing (with all the effort going into code elegance) and not have anywhere to go from there. I have a tendency to have wild exciting-sounding ideas, implement about a quarter of them, and end up with something that's certainly not like anything else, but isn't necessarily FUN or even a game.

I think I have a slightly higher chance of breaking through into the realm of 'making an actual game', but it hasn't really happened yet and may never happen. Even if it did, there wouldn't be money in it. I'm just not that good a designer, though I AM a sort of nascent designer. Plus, I'm too devoted to open source these days and that would likely be a handicap to market adoption; if nobody else can get rich off it either then it ain't gonna be a hit.

To make a hit thing you have to be able to see how exploitative third parties can get rich off you, and then let them do it and hope you get a cut (or some publicity).

I think the future isn't creative (insofar as popular hit products). It's basically focus-grouped artificial blandness and knock-offs consuming the market, and will not go back (occasional fluke successes will doubtless happen)

The future is learning how to manage these creative exploits as communication, perhaps to a very small audience for whom they're specially crafted. You'll be a craft beer or a hand made cheese. You have nothing to do with the market as we know it, it's all about what manner of distribution you can function under at the scale you will forever remain.

So who did you get to know in that three years? Did you form a community, perhaps of other game makers?

Most are "rogue-lite" which is a hot genre right now but all have something that make them stand out.

Rogue like games have the potential to become indie hits because they are very good for twitch/youtube audiences, because in general, up until the moment the player loses, they are winning.

This is great for streamers, no long-drawn out sequences where they know they've probably lost, no ability for audiences to get bored watching the player struggle in a losing fight. Instead the player gets to live out their power fantasy up until the moment that fantasy is betrayed and they lose.

And then it's a quick or instant reset and they're back to the pit / whale / plane and off they go again.

But a rogue-lite platformer? Ok that can work, Risk of Rain did an OK job with really poor graphics. But the gameplay was top-notch to compensate, and that was released before the big indie-deluge, that might not do so well if it were released today and had to go up against competetion from the likes of gungeon or dungreed.

With regards to this game, the graphics are too low to look good but haven't masked that by making the choice of going pixel-art, instead it just looks like it's from a PC gamer cover CD circa 1999.

Compare that to Slay the Spire, which has very basic art but has an engine that is well made, so it's limited art is still delivered very nicely. In the case of slay the spire they compensate with a good soundtrack which doesn't get irritating even on repeat playthroughs and some really solid gameplay.

Those are the smash-hits and a hits-based industry follows a power-law, so there's a vast quantity of mediocre games below there. What hope does a game which appears to mostly replicate previous gameplay with weak graphics stand?

That's not to say it was a waste of time, only the author can judge that.

\* Far too many to list, but I'm thinking along the lines of Slay the Spire, Enter the Gungeon, They are Billions. Even Playerunknown's battlegrounds or fortnite in some way fits the 'rogue-lite' formula of facing ever more difficult challenges up until a sudden and final death and complete reset.

Uber drivers will turn into the economics of superstars. Amazon warehouse workers will turn into the economics of superstars. You'll keep on getting individual ultra-high performers who dominate whatever area it is, and more ordinary performers will just plain fail.