The primary barrier to that would be my totally-nonexistent art skills. I figure by simplifying it I can minimize the things that go wrong at the sharp end.
Today's update: I haven't worked on either idea much because I've been burnt out with programming lately and learning Unity is something that would be nice to do, instead of something I want to do as a career. I considered giving up and trying to make the menus in Python as a mockup, but I decided that would defeat the purpose of trying to learn a game engine.
One major barrier i found in all my projects, was that I always tried to do hard stuff, when the basics are actually an obstacle themselves.
Also, the best indie games generally milk a small handful of quality code. Aka if your goal is to pump out content, you should be re-using stuff you already worked on, more commonly, than programming something new. The dev of Undertale focused on reusable and easy stuff, while also investing in content from his best skills, music and drama.
Of course now he makes an rpg like final fantasy which in my opinion stretches his skills to their limit, but to each his own.
Speaking of: I ran into a small problem yesterday. Specifically, I realized I didn't know what the results of the crafting system were going to be used for, which meant I had a hard time making parts or envisioning what they would be combined with to make.
Maybe a level editor would be more suitable?
The very basics are actually a fair amount of work, and you could then use that in your future projects. Also, a level editor is (slightly) more modular than a crafting system.