Well…
One thing is you can’t know if a ‘game idea’ is a good one before battle test it.
On one hand it’s similar to writing a book or shooting a movie. Sometimes most mundane narratives have something that ‘clicks’, making it a hit. And sometimes most interesting ones have bad execution, to become instant failures.
On the other hand, of course there are some understanding about ‘what is entertaining’ and ‘how to make things fun’. There are lots of discovered rules, tropes, approaches that worked so far. Like, Game of Thrones books always meant to be a cash cow TV series, and you see traces of almost all the rules that makes a book a good TV material. So there are many sources about narrative and game design that can guide you through your journey.
Of course the concepts discussed in these sources aren’t definitive and open to interpretation. But they helped me dearly exploring ideas and hand down better experiences.
Some I can recommend are,
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Art of Game Design (Jesse Schell): It comes with a deck of cards which is very valuable for self-feedbacking.
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The Game Narrative Toolbox
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How Games Move Us
With games, it’s ‘vertical slice’s, like preparing a 10 minute condensed version of a game. You can gather lots of feedback with that. Every game had that at one point. Balatro had that, GTA 6 had that, as well as “What Remains of Edith Finch” had that. If you can pique interest with a vertical slice, it’s mostly good idea to pursue the rest from that point.
So how did your experience is going with lenses? Do they help you with self-diagnosing so far?