maybe I have misinterpreted the OP but there are loads of simple games you could do. just take a nice simple idea and apply some imagination.
i,m sure i could do this in a week and ive been teaching myself java for only about 4 months.
Breakout is a nice simple game.
array of bricks and array of collision points for the ball. quite a few arrays if you think about it
a class for the game main method, a class for the ball, a class for the bricks, a class for the paddle, a class for the brickFormation.
labels & stuff are your score on screen, how many lives left how many bricks left etc.
Has to use File IO.
saving the players score into a league table of the top 10 scores.
retrieving a players progress in the game so they start from the level they finished last time
2 or more frames would be great
one frame to play the game, another for scores, game play info and stuff.
overloading:
not to sure about that im just a beginner,
but if you had a class to do set out the brick formation
you could have overloaded public methods in that .
brickformation(int brickRows, int brickColums)
and
brickformation(int GameLevel) as a bounus level.
same method but with different types of parameters is what i think it means.
this link isnt using swing, but gives a basic approach to coding the game ,
if your a year in i would imagine you could apply some imagination to it
http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs106a...signment-3.pdf
much luck
Sonny