I've recently had an inspiration for a game idea. This idea was worth more than most my other ideas, as this one feels like I could also complete it in the amount of time I had initially wanted to take for my first shareware project.

Now the problem is, how do I know my idea is any good? More importantly, is it something people will want. Yeah, yeah, I've heard the story, do market research, then find a game idea. However, seeing as none of you (at least those who responded to my initial post) seemed to have much of an idea of how to conduct reliable market research, I'm stuck with my gut instincts.

The game isn't incredibly unique, however I notice it doesn't seem to fit in with many of the standard games that appear to be all the rage in shareware right now. Is this good or bad? Seeing as puzzle games and 2D spaceshooters seem to be abundant here, is that because they are the most popular, or because they are a good game to make with limited resources?

Now I know that one area I can't quite decide on is target market. Based on the preliminary rough design ideas I've written down, this game could be marketted in many ways. Seeing as I can probably make the game with a more broad interest level, should I also market it that way? Or does that generally leave all areas only mildly impressed?

I know that presentation and delivery of your idea to the masses is probably more important in determining success than many other factors like genre and such, so I'm not quite sure how I plan to go about doing it.

Also, what key things have you noticed that separate your ideas that became big sellers and your ideas that flopped?

I am approaching this very slowly, as I don't want to spend a year on something doomed to fail from the start. So I need to know what kind of tests I should put my idea through to see if it will be popular, and the value of these tests?

I can tell you guys my idea if you would like to judge it yourselves?