My thoughts:
You look like you prefer coding, so I suggest you try to nail the gameplay first. Use very simple models and levels for prototyping or download them somewhere for free. Don't try to make the game beautiful with fancy shaders or the like, try to make it fun or interesting first.
I would even suggest that you don't use any spec/ normal mapping at all because it always looks like garbage in all indie games and even some big budget titles. Normal maps are fine and sometimes (!) useful and necessary if they are created from high poly models, otherwise they mostly look really bad and give the game a bad and non-unique nor interesting look.
If you have your gameplay ready you can try to create the appropriate atmosphere (not with normal maps) and experiment with an own style. You should try to find one that allows the rather rapid generation of content and don't try to emulate any style/ artstyle that you've seen from big studio.

That is a great tip, thank you!

I actually have two questions:
1) What the hell does Feaocder mean?
2) How is it pronounced?

I though the game was called Fearcoder until I read your question. Thanks for confusing me Sid...

Well.
Feaocder is a mixture between "Fear" and "Code" (Feaocder).
My first thought was "Fearcode" but since the word Feaocder does not exists, my game would be alot easier to find (Google Feaocder ) ^^

And the meaning of Feaocder (the word I invented) is to be scared of what you need to reach a goal.
This is explained witch, I use priming (flashing images that appear for about a millisecond) in my game to (try to) control emotions of the player. My goal is it to make the player fear the necessary tools (collecting codes) which he needs to reach his goal (finish the game).
That is the meaning of Feaocder.

It is pronounced german:

Feaocder
Fea - oc -der

Deutsch: Fi - os - der
English: Fe - os - dar

How should it be possible to display something shorter than the actual screen refresh-rate? (usually ~16.7ms)

^^

Don't get me wrong, the idea itself is great, but I have my doubts that this will really work.