Please correct me if this is not the right site for such a question.
So basically what I want to ask is how likely a game that is not a clone of successful freemium game likely to survive in the mobile gaming market?
Nearly all top mobile games seem to be on the same bandwagon of stylised cartoony graphics like Clash of clans, even their screenshots follow the same extremely generic labels like "Build your team" ,"Fight epic enemies","Choose your heroes" etc with some character standing on the foreground of the screenshot. It is extremely unoriginal and irritating at times, not to mention they put in the same screenshot over and over , which is a trend all games follow.
Even the giant microsoft is culprit of the same behaviour with its Age of empire:castle seige bearing a icon extremely similar to clash of clans icon , this cannot be coincidence right?
Its quite hard to find a popular game with original idea without pay2win model. I've seen some better games that do not include in app purchases and not made by some million dollar company.
So If I had to make a game , which of the following is more likely to survive the market (or even get some exposure and make decent money):
1. A freemium game with lots of in app purchases and cartoony graphics with children as target audience e.g. CoC clones, endless runners and other generic stuff etc.
2. A game that requires more skill without no in app purchases to progress and non stylised graphics
Theoretically speaking the biggest fear one'd have is putting a lot of work and time into an original and fun idea , release it to the market and then see it drowned by freemium cashgrabbing clones of it made by multi-million dollar companies that an indie can never compete with.
Sure nobody can own or copyright a game idea but it makes you wonder whether you should put effort on making a genuinely well designed and fun game to see it die before your eyes or just make a mediocre shovelware version of it with pay2win, timers, cartoons and other trending stuff, jump on the bandwagon and earn from it?