I've got a few pages of a rough-draft written up for my project now. I'm feeling expressive so I'll make up a random youtube account and demo some of the stuff I listed above and show what I've come up with. Like I said in the overview, I'm looking at making a Phantasy Star Online "Offline" type game. It'll have to be 1 player since I have no idea how to do photon network code nor port-forwarding/remote play stuff. I know nothing about the intricacies of multiplayer development. I understand conceptually that you need to design whatever you're making around the network framework you're going to use and you'll want to have experience in efficient/optimized code. I don't plan on attempting that right now but sometime this year I'd like to dabble into some in depth tutorials and maybe make a Worms/Gunbound clone as a good start. Who knows? For now, I'll shoot for a decent 1 player experience. I don't trust I could code or modify AI behaviors to be difficult or challenging enough to be fun against multiple players in a co-operative setting anyways. (Or I could just spam enemies and really dumb traps but that would kill the fun factor and probably the performance.) It'd also be cool to make a Dungeon Defenders type clone someday too (if I can get really good at the networking side of things). And while we're at it, why not Dark Souls as well? See the cravings never stop... better scale it down to something manageable and stand upon the shoulders of giants (a.k.a. using asset packs and learning from the successful) yet in a personally satisfactory and stylistically "unique" way.
Oh well we'll see. I just want to finish something.