My friend has a pretty interesting blog on the topic of game design.  His name is Dan Kline and he's a designer at EA Maxis who also worked for Crystal Dynamics and Blizzard prior to that. 

I'm deeply disturbed by games that put me in a situation where I feel like I'm all alone and without any connection to people.  My friend made a game called "The Mirror Lied" a while back that did this extremely well.  Silent Hill is also remarkable effective at making you feel very unsettled because of loneliness.  

Throughout my childhood I really wanted to play a video game based on a Miyazaki film.  So when "Ni no Kuni" was announced I felt like my childhood dream had finally come true. 

I actually use rpg maker XP to test my sprites (even on non-rmxp games) because you can import the sprite and test it immediately. 

Working on the database through iteration when I've already played the game for the millionth time, or refining subtle but critical story elements when I can't seem to get into a creative and empathetic mood.

Although I could probably list a number of games, I'll go with the first Suikoden.  It was strange because for the first hour of the game I didn't really get into it... I thought, "okay, generic empire-rebel plot, blah blah"... but after about an hour I realized I was seriously starting to get drawn into the story, and I was very attached to some of the characters.  In fact, there was one scene where I literally found myself bawling and yelling "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO" at the tv.

I was also very moved by Kerrigan's flashback sequence in Starcraft 2.  There's something so powerful and painful about watching someone quietly accept death (well, she thought she was going to die when she realized that Mengsk had abandoned her, and when she could see the swarm moving towards her).  I always get tears in my eyes when she drops her gun and looks upwards.

Also, in Chrono Trigger when you talk with Magus and find out who he really is.

My boyfriend went through something very similar... he was working full-time at Blizzard on Diablo 3 while also trying to finish an indie game in his spare time.  It was pretty rough on his wrists since he was constantly on the computer, but he was able to stick with it and finish the game.  I think he enjoyed being able to express himself creatively, and he was motivated by the hope that people would be able to have fun playing his game.

I'm also in a position where my day job and hobby are quite similar... I work as a video game composer, but I'm also creating an indie game in my spare time that requires a ton of music.  I often find it incredibly difficult to summon the creativity for my own game after working on others' projects all day long... but what gets me through it is imagining people playing the game and enjoying it.  I imagine my mom playing the game and getting to the really sad or revealing parts of the story, and that really makes me want to compose music that fits.  I also have a bunch of piano students that have tested my game, and they always ask me when I'm going to have something else for them to test because they "want to know what happens next"... for some reason I find that incredibly motivating ^_^ 

After 3 days of trying to fix a bug in a boss battle, I got fed up with it and ignored it for a month... then came back to it and asked for help.  Even with help though it took another 6 hours to solve. 

Now I know why you put the seizure warning up there  

Just out of curiosity, why did you write the title in katakana?

You could go through one of the doors? 

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet or not, but it's a shame that Ufouria's music is all messed up on the Wii.  With NES games, composers often used a different process for creating the percussion than they did for the melodic instruments... but apparently with Ufouria the bassline was created separately from the rest of the tracks, resulting in a pitch shift for all the melodic instruments except for the bassline.  The cacophony is pretty bad, but we're still trying to play it because it seems like an awesome game.

In Mario 3, when Mario is wearing the Tanuki suit and turns into a statue, can he pop those rainbow colored discs in the dungeons, or did I dream that?  Cuz I could have sworn I did that when I was younger, but I was never able to reproduce it...

Jonathan Coulton - Big Bad World One

I think the other posters already linked you to some good information on foley and general SFX resources, so I'll just try to add a couple things about home studio SFX creation:

-Try to set up your microphone in a small space with good acoustics (bathrooms and large closets are generally good for capturing the most rich sounds with the least amount of interference). 

-If you're trying to record footsteps, test out all the shoes in your house on a variety of different surfaces (bathroom counter, board of wood, small table, slab of marble, etc.)... I've found that women's shoes tend to produce better recordings because of the material and shape of the heel, though all shoes are different and sometimes you'll be surprised which shoes produce the best sound.
 
-Wind can be produced by a number of sources... you can even use your own mouth to make ambient wind sounds and alter them in programs like Soundforge (or Audacity).  Once you've captured a solid sound, you can lower the pitch and add reverb in order to create depth. 

-Synthesizers and sound libraries are actually a great place to start.  Even though it's nice to use homeade-everything on an indie project, the goal is to create the best all around experience for the player.  Despite the fact that my day job is to compose and design sound effects (and I've done a lot of foley work), I'll still use some sound library SFX for my own game-projects if I think it will contribute to a better experience for the player.  Often you'll actually get a much better result if you use these SFX and alter them slightly than if you attempt to do them yourself because of the materials and studio setup required to create the best and most realistic sounds.  Soundsnap.com has some pretty decent starter-sounds.

-Experiment a lot!  When I had to create the sound of butter hitting a zombie's head, I tried a number of different things (altering the sound of a tomato hitting a wall, throwing a stick of butter into oatmeal, etc.) before I actually ended up with the final (and best) result: actually smacking a stick of butter onto someone's head right in front of the microphone.  Experimenting is a lot of fun, too... and you can learn a lot about the process.

Anyways, hope these were of some help -- good luck with your project!

Hey KM, your site is looking great!  Also, thanks for the shout out... that was very nice of you ^_^

[sue you]

I don't really understand why you're against paying a musician a small royalty in exchange for music since you don't have money to give them upfront.  Craig is right, you don't really have to do anything except agree on an amount (like 10% for 5 years) and then make sure to pay the person.  You can even specify when you would pay them (monthly, every other month, every thousand dollars made, etc.) -- it's really not that difficult.  Plus, the composer is already doing you a favor at the point where they accept royalties as opposed to an upfront payment... it's very likely that they could do a ton of work for you and never ever get paid.  There's no guarantee that your game will be commercially succesful, and therefore no guarantee that they'll ever be properly compensated for the amount of time they spend creating music.

Another thing to think about: it's sort of frowned upon to say you're going to take someone's hard work, make money off of it, and then not pay them a dime.  It would be a different story if you were established and offering unpaid internships... at least in that case the composer could have something significant to put on their resume in exchange for the work they did.  My first job was unpaid, but the company I worked with is an established company... having that on my resume helped me get a ton of subsequent paid jobs (not to mention that the first company paid me for every project I did with them after the first).  And even if you get someone to make you free music, if your game becomes successful, it's very easy for the composer to come back and sue you claiming that they were never properly compensated.  You'd be surprised how often this happens when there's no formal contract in place to explain compensation.   

If you are however dead set on not compensating your composer, you could use music that's in the public domain.  I know a number of developers who use remixed classiscal music or even really old jazz.

I've always loved this guy...

Hey Derek, just stopping by to say I hope you and Andy are making a lot of progress with the Xbla version!  I haven't talked to him in a while so I'm guessing that you guys are still pretty knee-deep in it... looking forward to playing more of it when you're all finished.  Good luck!

I can't remember if I posted here yet or not... but I just had to stop by to say that this game is incredibly addictive.  Even if I'm just doing stupid things like tunneling down to the lava and then trying to dig a really long passage underground in the hopes of finding secret block caves, I'm having fun doing it.

I like the game's premise, it's always fun when you can play from the perspective of the animal.  I just have a couple suggestions:

-Maybe the battles could be slower or include a really brief explanation.  They went by so quickly that I didn't really know what was going on while I was fighting.  Also, because most of the NPC animals did nothing when I tried interacting with them, the battles felt very random.
-It would be nice if all the NPC animals did something (either saying something really brief or triggering a battle), because I started becoming confused about what things you could interact with and what things you couldn't since there were so many actionless NPCs.
-This isn't that big of a deal because the game is fairly short, but the music doesn't loop properly.

Overall, it's a very cute game!  I love the tail wagging animation