I've struggled with game design and dev for years, mostly because time and real life not giving me the space I need to truly tackle it. That coupled with major depression and then some and it's been tough. My development skills have improved, but my design skills have not.

I started working on something earlier this year in a game jam and I liked the idea I was coming up with for this game, I shared it with some peers and friends and they all sounded like they would thoroughly enjoy playing it. continue designing everything myself. I'm in a spot where I lost my job and just DoorDash until something good comes along and have been trying to push and motivate myself to continue this project, but I'm scared just that all my effort will be useless yet again.

Quick Story. I designed and developed a game back in 2014, it didn't do well. It's felt the same with everything I pursue, I do it, people say they love it, they want to buy/play and then it never happens.

So I've been doing things on and off and I feel like I'm getting too old to be able to learn to design and develop at the same time and keep up and have something mildly successful (in my eyes)

My ultimate dream is to make a game, and launch it on Steam, and have people play/enjoy it, but should I just get assets for my game? Isn't there a chance another game would have those assets? Does it diminish my work/effort?

UPDATE: To Clarify I am talking about ART assets not game mechanics, etc.