Precisely the point I often wonder, when I see people spending hours upon hours creating a mod, when what they are doing could easily be a game in its own right. And unity has made things so much easier (Yea, for danish guys
). Meant joking as in adding more games that could consume time otherwise spent on your game, but of course I'll gladly add to tips and all, if any of those I got can be of help. I also have a rather large backlog of notes about game creation from various conferences and similar I I've been a part of, which I can check to see if any might apply for you. That said, I consider it likely that your time with mods have already fixed some of the biggest mistakes game creators often make, e.g being too ambitious or trying to do too much in too small a time frame. But lets see, I will have more - but one consideration I would always make when going for hack'slash is the replayability and longevity. The first being in regards to length (procedural generation comes to mind, when considering solutions others have taken) and the other is usually down to visual cues, flashy effects, more unlocks, enemy and area variety and so forth. Seeing as yours a a shooter, you'll likely have a harder time creating mechanics to truly differentiate different shooting styles in order to keep the player interested by introducing fresh takes (like say they would in Castlevania or the DMC series with combo moves. Another prime example would be the Metal Gear Rising one, with some stealth kills and nice kill animations thrown in). All that is of course depending on how lengthy you want it. Anyway I'll search my brain and notes to see if I come up with some stuff of interest. I'll be back