Kudos Design Post-Mortem

Kudos was easier to program (and still is) than it was to design. Game Design is HARD. And when you don't have similar games to leach ideas from, it's VERY hard. Heres some information on some of the decisions taken when designing the look of the game:

http://www.positech.co.uk/kudos/postmortem.html

And designing the mechanics of the thing was much worse. And here I am about to start doing another original IP. What's wrong with me?