Creating an entire game from scratch is a monumental task, primarily due to the fact that a game consists of multiple kinds of systems all working together as a whole. It must have elaborate aesthetics, musical appeals, engaging mechanics, intuitively satisfying UI/UX, rich narratives, enough content, and other details that must necessarily fit together in order to present the game as a nicely finished product. And of course, it must be marketed well.
For a large game development team, this level of complexity isn't really that hard to handle. Arts, Music, Storytelling, Engineering, Marketing, and other parts of the game development process can partially separate themselves from one another, thereby enabling smaller sub-teams to come into existence each of which do not have to care too much about things outside of their own field of expertise.
For a small indie studio which consists of only up to 3 or 4 individuals, however, developing a game that also happens to be competitive in the marketplace is an uphill battle. Each individual under such a circumstance will have to wear many hats at once and pour a great deal of talent/insight just for the sake of slightly increasing the sheer chance that it might help them compete with large AAA game companies more effectively.
One solution to this major difficulty is to simplify the game's design as much as possible, so as to exploit a methodical shortcut which would allow a small team to develop a competitively fun game within a fairly small time period. Specifically speaking, I would suggest making the overall gameplay as emergent as possible (where user interaction is non-narrative but still rich enough), such as those of Chess, Go, and other traditional board games. Also, it may be a good idea to turn all graphical assets into abstract figures (e.g. billiard balls, board game pieces, icons, etc), so as to minimize the degree of artistic endeavors.