Itch's dashboard helpfully tells me my first-jam-day articles got a thousand views and no hearts.

So I'm trying to figure out local culture. I looked at the first few pages of the devlog categories to figure how my team can pleasantly surprise everyone.

As an outsider, please forgive my lack of recognition of some game design norms. I'm sorry and welcome correction.

Game archtypes (having devlogs)

The Same forest / forest town / city with cars

They're clearly the same thing in the same 2D top-down-ish engine, appearing to also share assets. It seems the character joins NPCs wandering around the three above equivalent contexts, all trapped in this one game engine with no escape (?).

Dating sim

The above sameness but with static pictures of rooms from the side, with several kinda different but also kinda similar people standing together smiling. Accompanied by announcements like 20 endings, new scenes, new story arc, 64 original art assets.

Godot game engine 3D demo example with simple 3D shape people

Really, what the title says. Hey, can I just tell all the studios fighting in that space that my friend jns has an incredible 3D engine with integrated computer terminals that you could use to disrupt the heck out of all your peer studios. https://linkerror.com/eternal

Proprietary level building framework built on one of the above engines

Sometimes, the same but an asset building framework. Marketed towards the other people in this list.

Honestly, this is what logos lisp legend (nonmonetised) is right now (but built out of the CLIM spec McCLIM open source implementation!).

Particle effect, the game

This is what both etenil and I at least did for last year's jam too, honestly.

Others

Themed hack clone (similar to forest town), gross horror, literally so random, sex game. Rarely arcade platformer, simulated card game. Ignoring about 20 super-popular games, existing game projects get about ten hearts on their devlogs.

What does it mean

So to start with we have a respectable completely novel level builder and engine I wrote with the lisp interface thing nobody here has heard of, engine dabbling prior to the jam. So we're starting in a strong place (popular kind of thing, unique, clearly different to the clone army).

I was originally going to jam the forest-village-walking-around archetype. I still think it's a good idea, because our game engine is worlds different to that one game engine everyone on itch seems to have identically used in the same way. So it would be a breath of fresh air in that space.

The power play would be to play into the unique-line-art-mechanics of our engine to make the forest-village-walking-around unrecognisable as the above archetype with their consistent sameyness. I'll see what my team think.