After seeing all the games at Chicago Pinball Expo this year it made me realize two things:
1. If you want your game to get noticed, if the theme isn't killer (big trouble in little china) you better have an interesting mech.
2. If you can't come up with a killer mech, your game should stand out as being very different from the standard pinball cabinet (2x scale, head-to-head).
I'm also realizing I may want to put my new theme on hold for a very good reason and go back to blue. I think in most cases, your first homebrew isn't that great (there are some exceptions) and I want the other theme to really be executed well after getting a finished game under my belt. I don't know that I'll have a cool mech, but I have been pondering the idea of an interesting cabinet.. one that will make homebrew tours to multiple shows way more feasible. As an engineer, I always try to do small experiments to see if something is going to work out.. if I have some success, I scale it up. I just made a prototype of something and I was sort of blown away by how well it worked (did the math of scaling up and the results were even better than expected). After going through the cost of a cabinet (mostly hardware) for sure I want to design my own cabinet, and as long as I'm doing that I'm going to cost reduce it, simplify it, lighten it.
Secondarily, I need to just START.. Like I need to build a simple rotisserie, cut a piece of wood and start mocking up my playfield up again. If you never start, you'll never finish.
