Hi Dickmilch, I just published my fifth small game for friends and family for Christmas. Which means right now I am planning the 2026 Christmas game.
Game development is time consuming, no doubt. I will work on my game all year beside my full time job. This means I possibly have on average 10h per week. I'd typically do very little animation since animation is very time consuming. I estimate I could do 1 minute of animation in the 10 h of one week. But there is all the rest to do, most of it in my case 3D models. I'd estimate I spend half of the time 3D modelling, 20% programming, 20% testing and 10% on miscellaneous other tasks (research, planning, itch.io page etc.)
In case you aren't into 3D modelling. there are places where you can get free 3D models online. And of course there is AI (But since using AI is basically stealing from the artists whose work was used to train the AI, I don't do it). There is one disadvantage with the free stuff and the AI stuff you need to consider: It is never exactly what you had in mind. When you put together a little bit from here and a little bit from there you inevitably get a some mismatch in style and quality between the different items. With the time you spend searching for just the right thing you might possibly manage to model it yourself.
I am older myself. That wouldn't bother me. You don't necessarily have to code, there are visual scripting tools too and many people also use AI to help them code. I can't comment on those things from my own experience . I did do a lot of online learning though. There are so many great tutorials on YouTube and the good game engines come with free online tutorials as well.
BTW: I worked on my very first game for several years, with different engines and never finished it. I am fine with that. There is no doubt a lot to learn before you have a game you can be proud to publish. Even now I abandon a half finished game sometimes. The last one I abandoned turned out not to be as much fun as I had hoped.