Well yes , if you just paint him blue and call him jario , but if you make a game about a mechanic in mushroom world thats saves princess turkey from a dragon , your not copyright infringing , as long as the dragon is not bowser and the pincess is not princess peach and you dont have mario , then ur good to go. Hence you can make a pac man clone but instead of pac man eating dots you have a cheeseburger eating fries , and of course ur own levels.

And the reason they cant get u for that , is because they cant copyright gameplay , just like a karate movie cant be copyrighted so that anyone making another karate movie is breaking the law , same with games , and anything else. So inspiration is fine , as long as u dont copy , if you get inspired from more than one source it's even better , as you are less likely to clone something. About the being original , well , look at all the new movies , and games , they are all clones of past ones , I mean , even disney has made millions and millions just ripping old books , so dont worry about just dreaming up everything , everyone uses previous things for inspiration.