I'd say it's an awesome idea. It's fun and is a great way to get deeper into programming.
And hey, it doesn't
have to be some hugely complex beast of a game- some of the best games are really simple (solitaire and minesweeper, anyone?). Shiny 3D graphics are always nice, of course, but I hardly think you need them to make a good game.
And hey, you can still make pretty awesome games with only 2D graphics. I found
Epiar a while back and really like the idea behind it. I spent a week or two last summer doing a fairly comprehensive rewrite of it in Java. Great learning experience for me, plus it was fun to see how an old favorite game of mine worked. (On a side note, converting non-OO C code to strict-OO Java code is sort of hard
)
As long as you don't shoot for something unreasonable, anyone with enough ambition and free time should be able to do it. It isn't *easy*, but I think that's the whole point?
Anyway, count me in! And I bet there's a few people on my team/school that would like to as well. (And this reminds me.. has anyone else seen the
SummerPyGames? It seems pretty similar to this idea.)