trying to think of simple-ish ideas to make into a finished polished DOS game that aren't just yet-another-tetris-or-snake-clone
like i super get the importance of starting off with a beaten-path project to really hone in your skills and stuff, but also i wanted to make something that would be more interesting than "ah, that's neat" and quickly forgotten
one idea i had was a match-3 puzzle game, since i already started one for NES (but haven't finished yet bc i burnt out on trying to work with the PPU, something that wouldn't be a problem in DOS & i get to use a mouse) and there aren't many (to my knowledge) DOS bejeweled clones
like... a very simple allegro executable ends up about 760kB, and the 3d renderer i compiled which also uses GLM ended up bigger than a floppy... that's way bigger for a DOS game than i'd like
i think my first project will be done with Allegro since it makes video and input calls dead simple, but eventually i do want to work with either lighter frameworks or direct hardware access