I’m not a game developer but if I were to make a game, the only ideas that come to mind seem to be “I’m gonna remake my favorite game but change these things I didn’t like about it!” but I heard that’s a bad idea usually.
I’m wondering how much change, and to which aspects (gameplay, mechanics, theme, etc), do you think is needed to make a game inspired by something instead of a rip-off?
If you’re not copying setting, characters or story then you’re not copying everything. Those are also part of the recipe that makes the game work, through things like level design, narrative design, and game feel.
Copying critically means not just copying blindly but understanding how things work and why they were designed that way to begin with. You talk about wanting to make changes, but do you know how they would affect all the other parts of the design?
It’s very common for new game designers to dive into making changes without a full understanding of what they’re even trying to solve, let alone the knock on effects of their proposed solutions.