As you may expect when you see my signature, my game is notorious for falling into clone territory, but i've significantly altered my perspective now. Back when Vitality was started, the idea behind it was much more like the ideas that went into starbound, random planets, randomly generated mobs however with a much stronger focus on technology and advancement, the initial concept was more about flying to planets, exploring and studying, finding resource and ultimately terraforming them.
Backstory and Personal experience
We had a similar smack in the face when back in 2012, we had began some very light prototyping and after about a month of playing around with ideas, we stumbled across starbound after telling a friend how excited we were about the idea. Naturally, he replied with the standard "oh, so just like Starbound?" response which any developer knows feels like a smack in the gut when you have a big-budget competitor who could easily smash you out of the park. Bear in mind, all of this was around a year and a half before any public version of SB was actually released.
In January 2013, we decided to start the project properly, and also agreed that with regard to both scope and feasibility that we would trim out a lot of the content that we didn't want, and alter the direction to focus more on the advancement and technology aspects, whilst focusing on a singular earth. It was a bit of an odd decision but ultimately, both of us were happy with the direction the game has taken. Ultimately, the vision of the game was changed, however it was more a thinning of scope than an outright complete change of direction. This was the point at which the vision for the game became well-cemented.
Throughout our process, there have naturally been countless times we have entered the clone debate and at this point, I see less and less similarities between "similar" games. I always choose to focus on the things that make the game unique, not the things that make it the same. Lots of games share similar mechanics, similar win conditions, similar objectives.. The truth is, players like this, having those expectations is often important for gamers, rather than trying to be niche or clever just for the sake of it. But ultimately, your game isn't any single mechanic, it is a soup of mechanics and also the result of different styles, both artistic and as a result of how the game was programmed. The "feel" and "vibe" are ultimately what define a game and these can be far more important than the types of mechanics that shape a game.
For us, the sandbox elements are the biggest key factor when drawing comparisons, however I always stand by the statement that in our game, the sandbox exists as a means of enabling the rest of the game to work. It doesn't define the gameplay but simply provides a framework and a grounding for everything else to be built upon.
Staying true to your original vision
I don't know enough about your game to be able to comment, but I would guess that it is perhaps not as similar as you let out. Every game has something unique, I would say that it is more important to stick to your vision rather than try and force change for the sake of it. Trying to be different for the means of trying to be different will just deviate your game from what you had intended it to be in the first place. I know I didn't necessarily abide by this early on, however it's been something i've stuck to for the last 4 years now that i'm invested, and i'm finally really happy with how the project has shaped up. Whilst there was a time when it was similar to all these other games, it has had time to evolve, get polished and ultimately get far closer to the vision in my mind than I had ever anticipated possible.
There is going to be a reason you chose to make the game you are making, in my opinion, it is more important for you to stay true to that original idea, the idea that inspired you, gets you excited and keeps you motivated, rather than to alter it to something else. If you do that, your own game will just end up feeling foreign to you, and that is a far worse feeling.
Regarding Release
Regarding competition and sales potential, I guess it really depends on a few things:
- How much your audience overlaps, sometimes larger games fill a different category, perhaps if they had a different multiplayer community or a slightly different demographic, you may not actually have as much overlap as you may think.
- What your aspirations for the game are. Ultimately, we all want to sell as many copies as possible, but lots of games don't do crazy well. Considering say 10,000+ sales can be a pretty decent achievement, when you look at 10,000 players out of a massive field of players, it's not that many, to the point where an audience overlap may not even make a conceivable difference. Then, once your game gets popular anyway, it doesn't really matter because you have players, and that organic growth drives more players. Think Paladins and Overwatch, huge controversy at the start, people expected paladins to crash and burn, yet it's doing pretty well.
- Finally, release window, you are talking about prototyping. Knowing that games can take a bloody long time to make, the final release window may not even conflict. In the case of my own project, the original anticipated release was like 2-3 years ago, however given part-time work and other life commitments, it has taken a lot longer. One major benefit of that however is that it's opened up a bit of a hole in the market. The other big players have started to dwindle a bit more (and are no longer as actively popular as they were) so there is a good window of opportunity for our release, when in the past, that might not have been true. Whilst it may be naive of me to personally try and compete directly with the big dogs, one of the biggest potential scares we had was the release of Terraria: Otherworld, which had a massive following, however whilst it is a shame that the game has been cancelled, I can't help but feel that only improves our own standing
Edit: reformatted it a bit, because my classic waffle style is a bit OTT
