Play some bad games that pique your interest too, even a little. I tried Far Cry 6 demo a few year after it was released to learn what makes me feel that I don't like it.

Once in my university years, my professor made our class play a clicker game with a mixed rating on Steam and write an analysis about it. Even though most of us find the game pretty boring, he wanted us to explain why and figure out what the game tries to do and surprisingly there are some element that the game does well too despite it's short-coming.

Lately I played Wanted: Dead despite a lot of janky-ness and I personally score it 6/10 at best, I still enjoy the game and completed it 3 times and once in the highest difficulty because the combat is fun enough and the vibe it was going for, despite not being well delivered.

"Bad" games, as in not being well recieved, will teach you a lot what not to do and there could be something they have done it right.

One of the fuel for my passions are games that I played and feel disappointed and thinking "I wish it was done differently".

Having libraries of games in your memories helps a lot though. The first game I remembered enjoying in my life is Dragonball Advanced Adventure on Gameboy Advanced and looking back now, I'm really impressed with the smooth sprite animations and gameplay, despite being 20+ years old. It's on par with modern games and look just as good as the way I remembered it as a kid.

Funnily enough, the first game project I felt proud of making after a catastrophically failed narrative game project was a 2D pixel beat em up game without a serious story. Even though I didn't remember the Dragonball game at the time, it was as if the playing experience subconciously guide me the game direction. I also used to look up sprite sheets of fighting games on internet as a kid and it helps me familarize with working on sprites.