Point number two, before you even finish your first sentence, is to tell us the coolest unique thing about it.
There isn't a cool unique new thing in one game. There is a cool unique new thing every 3-5 years. It's just a fact: most games are remake if you prefer. I'm not saying games are not enjoyable and if they are for you, it's very cool.
Most indie games have a cool quirk that makes them unique. Maybe it's not new, or even unheard of, but the way it is baked into the gameplay is what sets them apart.
Of course if you're a game company making a generic zombie FPS, then you might not have something cool and unique to pitch your game with— but in that case, it won't be a surprise to anyone if your game performs miserably.
I agree with the sentiment here, but the bigger issue is most games may not have a cool unique new thing that is communicable to listeners. Considering most games take at least a year to create, they usually stumble upon at least a few innovative, but small, ideas. Looking back at a game like Halo, probably the coolest feature was the ability to only hold two weapons at a time, a nowadays popular design choice which radically alters gameplay balance. However if you had told me before release that was the "killer feature", I would have been bored and uninterested.
Agreed. You just touched on one of the oddest quirks in psychology as well. People don't like to have their options taken away. But at the same time they don't want to think about the options they have.
So even though only having two weapons at a time is arguably a killer feature, it would be almost impossible to convince someone that this is true. Another example might be Apple, every time they take away an option and people complain they are arguably making their product better, but theres no way they can convince people that's true.
If people don't know they have an option they usually don't care about it or put up with any inconvenience.
MDK2 (released in March of 2000) had you play a third of the levels as a four-armed anthropomorphic dog and respectively let you hold four weapons at the same time. The gameplay balance they were going for was similar to Serious Sam, I think... i.e. everybody dies in large numbers (except you, occasionally). Actually, that game was made up almost exclusively of cool new features, go play it. The fact that one of the best third-person shooters/adventures was produced by BioWare of all companies still blows my mind a bit.
I made a 2d platformer game. It's a remake in many ways. I didn't spend much time on it.
But does it have something cool and unique?
Yup.
It has a custom physics engine.
Is the physics engine better than the ones other people make? Does it have some fancy theoretical advance? No way. It's simple and naive.
But it's different b/c i just made one up from scratch instead of copying it. It's a little quirky. That means if you played a bunch of platformers before, this one won't feel too repetitive, because the physics are different. It gives you something new to learn and get used to and figure out how to use to your advantage.
Example: in my game, ground tiles have high friction, air has much less, and ice tiles have even less than that. Therefore to land on ice and stop yourself you usually want to jump right after landing and put on the brakes while back in the air instead of while sliding on the ice.
Every game really does need to have something that's different from other games to give you some reason to play this game instead of those other games.
And it's not that hard to do that. Even if you're making a remake. All remakes should change something to be a little different from prior games.
Even if you're doing a sequel and do not change the art or game engine at all, you could still say "what it has that no other game has is MORE LEVELS that you haven't played before in the original". That will explain to people why to buy it.
If they don't find value in what I made, then it won't sell. And that's as it should be. Shrug. My first customer is me. I like it.
It's quite possible to make stuff different in a way no one likes. But you can and should make your stuff different in some way or other and then use this as a reason people might want to buy it.
There isn't a cool unique new thing in one game. There is a cool unique new thing every 3-5 years. It's just a fact: most games are remake if you prefer. I'm not saying games are not enjoyable and if they are for you, it's very cool.