For anyone curious:
Lucas Pope, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Pope
> He is best known for experimental indie games, notably Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, both of which won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize alongside other awards.
Papers, Please was a really nice concept, executed well. It even inspired a few other games, like Contraband Police, which recently came out and is pretty okay (like a 3D spiritual successor, sort of).
Toby Fox, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Fox
> He is known for developing the role-playing video games Undertale and Deltarune for which the former garnered acclaim and he received nominations for a British Academy Game Award, three Game Awards and D.I.C.E. Awards, the latter known as the video game equivalent of the Academy Awards.
Both Undertale and Deltarune didn't seem too impressive on a technical level (e.g. not going for flashy graphics like many modern titles), but the world building, the gameplay mechanics, the character writing and everything else just felt really, really nice and on point.
I guess both of those devs are a good example that projects with a good concept and even better execution are still likely to be quite successful. Personally, I'd definitely also throw the Outer Wilds game on top of this pile as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Wilds
Here's a documentary about its making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbY0mBXKKT0 (spoilers)
However, such success won't be likely for the majority of the developers out there, which is to be expected. Not that people shouldn't make games that they are passionate about, just that they should set their own expectations accordingly.