To be a successful indie dev, you need to take an auteur approach: have a singular vision, create a unique aesthetic, and possess a fundamental understanding of the medium (gameplay). You also need to be able to balance all of these qualities with the resources you have at your disposal. If you have a great story, but no gameplay, you shouldn't be making a game. If you have an aesthetic, but can't implement it correctly, you're going to need to pay for assets one way or another. If your gameplay is merely a rehash of something old, you better have some twist to the other elements that makes it stand out. And all of this doesn't guarantee success, merely gets you to the baseline where you can be successful. Being good at programming is probably the least important skill in game development unless your idea is so innovative that you will need complex systems without precedence.

You need marketable differentiation.

Also make sure your game appeals to furries. That's where the real money is in indie game dev.