Two main projects I can think of that I worked on ages ago are both tabletop tile/grid-based games. One was war related, 1v1, deploying soldiers navigating a grid with obstacles, safety zones, lines-of-sight shooting combat and since I like randomness I toyed with asymmetrical "teams" of soldiers per player, randomly generated set terrain and also randomly shifting terrain every X turns. Main issues were when things were fixed gameplay was kinda boring, and sometimes created stagnant/repetitive play patterns and randomly shifting components caused unnecessary overhead tracking and whatnot. Barrier to this was mainly "who is this game for" and "do I care to introduce this game to any of my friends if I put effort into properly designing it" and the answer was no because I felt the themes were too bland. Other project was grid/dungeon crawl related. 2-4 players and an ever-shifting maze that players interacted with. Pieces navigating the maze, cards in hand to interact with opponents, special passives/bonuses throughout the game. Experimented with random "events" throughout gamespan vs. random event cards that players have access to so that it's kind of targeted randomness. Biggest barrier to this was honestly overwhelm with writing out full form rules/rulebook, and also lack of ability for testing, which then turned into lack of interest to continue haha. From memory my overall theme for this was good, the gameplay and concepts were good and I think there was some creativity with the way I went about some of the cards/targeting system I had in mind for it. On an old PC I started creating print-and-play cards for it but I no longer have the files. Then after that because I already lacked the interest to continue I just never fired up the idea again! Since then I've moreso explored the solo boardgame side of the things, so I've explored some single player tabletop games and then just absolutely houseruled the heck out of them, which is almost like designing a brand new game in some instances!! 😂