You also mention egglings Deluxe on the Mapped by our ancestors itch page, but if I google "egglings Deluxe, by DexCG" I find literally nothing, so I'd really like to know what game you are talking about.

The ones I can think of from the top of my head are:
Team Buddies (PS1)
Swing (PS1) (also called Marble Master in US)
Gain Ground (Mega Drive)

one day I'll make a spiritual successor to each of them, just you wait (or do it before me, I wanna play it, pls)

I have a vague list of games in my head that are roughly in the spot of: doing smth cool that nobody has quite reproduced yet, while being basically almost forgotten. So stuff ripe for exploitation ... I mean inspiration. Although I can't guarantee that it isn't just me being blinded by nostalgia.

dozens!

I'm busy until december but then potentially, if the project fits ...

I thought what I'm looking for is like speedrun.com but for high scores instead of speedrunning, which made me realize that twingalaxies.com is a thing. But somehow I'm not motivated at all to join and participate there ... I guess it's too impersonal.

there is a joke in here about joining the community that is the dm's with your wife, but I'm too afraid to make it

wondering how many people use one as a line-auto-complete that don't feel like that counts as using AI, because they aren't doing full on vibe-coding

I think having the real photo characters would be funnier