Because games are made of other games all the way down to their most fundamental mechanics, you can also create new games by combining abstract Game Design Patterns in interesting ways to create new patterns.
An example Raph Koster gives in his 2014 GDC talk is if you take a “Visit Every Node on the Graph” pattern (Pacman) and mark only specific nodes to visit, the pattern becomes “Pick Up Objects.” Going further, if you turn the specific nodes you need to visit into hidden information it becomes a “Secrets” gameplay system.