The following series of articles by Damon Brown is a must-read for every game developer, especially if you work alone, like me. The hardest part of developing a game is often not the programming, but the design itself. Coming up with good ideas is damned hard (not to mention thinking of a name!). And often, when you come up with something, only to find out it wasn’t so great after all a few days later. A cool example of this (even though it’s not game development related at all) can be found in the movie Office Space, where someone invented a “Jump-to-conclusions-mat”. I’m not gonna try to explain what it was, just watch the movie. Anyway, the articles have some really good tips on designing games, coming up with ideas and avoiding to screw up.

Nine step recipe for good independent game design, part 1
Nine step recipe for good independent game design, part 2
Nine step recipe for good independent game design, part 3