The only minigame that's ever felt good to me is reloading in Gears Of War.

I can't imagine anyone doesn't set design goals before starting a project. 

so this is a bit for people who use OGMO level Editor. I added Levers into the game and made it so that each Lever has a Node. When the Lever is thrown an activator is created at that location and that activator allows it to interact with anything I want. In the new test the lever will drop a bridge for you.

The next step is to have a Wire object that you can place on an object and then place a node on another object to completely modularize it.

That is gorgeous.

Derek Yu.  Spelunky drew me to here, which trapped my soul forever.

In terms of people who do good work and inspire me:

Kenta Cho
Terry Cavanagh
Increpare
Smestorp
Brian Walker
Tarn Adams

Essentially, it's OpenGameArt that you have to pay for.  Or perhaps it's closer to Oryx's sprite packs.  I guess if the ratio of quality to price was high enough it would be ok.

The newer is much smoother and less dorky, but I like the dorky charm of the old one. 

1 puzzle away from finishing The Swapper.  I love the art style.  It feels like some sort of mix of found art, claymation, and the macrophotography of The Fountain. 

It makes me think of an alternate universe where Solaris got a tie-in game a la the 80's and 90's when any movie could become a game (Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Lawnmower Man, Platoon, etc.)

Pick a tool (GameMaker, Unity, Flash, HTML5, Construct, MMF, whatevs) .  Make a small game or two with it.  If you really like the tool, stick with it.  If you don't, pick a different tool, and repeat.

While I was being a pedantic asshole in my rebuttal to Paul, his response makes a fantastic point.  The tools that have the largest communities will be the easiest to learn (or at least, the easiest to get answers to your questions).  With that in mind, I think the first 4 tools that I listed (GameMaker, Unity, Flash, HTML5) are the best bets. 

There are infinitely many functions that can satisfy those conditions.  Evan is right, you need to know how you want it to feel.

and yet not a single successful commercial indie game has been made in construct or construct 2 (to my knowledge), whereas game maker has dozens of them

judge engines by the games created in them, not their feature list

Well, I think that might just be a sampling size issue.  I'm going just by feel, not hard numbers, but I'm going to guess that Game Maker has dozens times the number of users than construct or construct 2. 

The only one that I think actually has any sort of decent lessons to teach and not just broad pontificating on the lines of "what is gams?" is Game Feel by Steve Swink.

I was replaying the original Castlevania a few weeks ago, and it really made me appreciate the fact that most modern platformers allow you to change direction mid-jump. Unrealistic, yes, but far more engaging.

You also have to remember you are calling a game in which a dude has a 6 foot vertical jump and fights Dracula "realistic" (or at least more realistic than some other game).  Realism can have a place in games, but don't let realism tie your hands.

I think Themsalltook is the closest on this.  It isn't about not being "realistic" it's about successfully mapping what a person feels when jumping to the input available.  The feel of controlling jump height and position after the jump event feels more natural than front loading all jump control (such as in SSX).

I feel like we're doing your homework for you.

This sort of thing is exactly up my alley.
I'll consider using this.  I think I prefer my current approach as it handles room/node/whatever generation as well, but I might use this as a kind of fine-tuning decorator to help the flow.

Given the demands of a full time job and life, I get in ~10-25 hours of active work (coding, etc.).  If just thinking and brainstorming counts then it's probably closer to 25-40 hours.
I typically get in an hour in the morning before my job, probably another hour in the evening, and depending on the weekend, I might get in anywhere between 0 and 8 hours per day.

Take a chill pill [and get a life].

With conflict resolution skills like this, I can see you will make a wonderful team leader!

My god you are fucking dense.

Not everyone can be a programmer, however hard they try - right? I have realized this simple fact many years ago while trying to get a grasp of dynamic web, I just can't get my head around it - simple as that.

Wow, you failed after trying something small and simple and gave up?  Game dev is going to be so easy for you!

As for the process of making games. Yes, I do understand it takes time and effort. However looking at Gimym's list I see a lot of projects for which people put a lot of T & E yet failed to achieve a success [with notable exceptions]. So, those guys could actually benefit from focusing on monetization first, programming second - don't you think?

A shameless cashgrab, that's a surefire way to make a good game that will capture the hearts and minds of fans!

I do have idea what could be unique gameplay. Of course I won't share it in public for various reasons - 1. first mover advantage, 2. every programmer has ideas, they don't need mine, 3. I'm crazy and I don't want the world to find out [lol]

2 and 3 are correct.  1 is you being delusional and actually thinking your idea has value.  I know that everyone has beat the drum that ideas are valueless and execution is all that matters, but it is correct.  In fact even further, your idea is probably worse than valueless as it probably sucks and you won't realize this until spending a lot of time (or money [or both]) figuring that out.

If you don't need a strong pseudorandom number generator, a lot of hashing functions should supply enough randomness.