(Sorry for the wall of text. I've bolded the important bits if you just want to skim it)

So the pre-Ludum Dare season is upon us once again, and you know what that means! Another slaughter round full of repeated theme ideas, followed by four rounds of elimination and a theme that no one ever seems to like. But how can we make the theme better? Well, I’ve said in the past that we should revamp the whole voting process, but seeing as it’s a little late for that now, I suppose we’ll have to work around the system we have in place by educating people on what makes a theme good or bad. So, just in time for the slaughter round, here is my manifesto on what makes a good Ludum Dare theme!

First, let’s consider why we have a theme in the first place. From the official rule page:

“Ludum Dare is about encouraging you to make something. The theme is something we do to help everyone with the “blank sheet of paper” problem that artists and creators deal with. It’s easier to make something with some direction than none.

[…] while we don’t enforce that your game meets some minimum “themeyness”, the community does see significance in the Theme. So while we wont do anything about it, the community as a whole prefers games that do use the Theme. So as a general suggestion, if you want to score well in Ludum Dare, make sure you do use the theme in some way.

So the whole purpose of the theme is to give everyone a common set of ideas to build off of. It’s to fill your head with all the potential of making a game over the course of a weekend. At the same time, it’s meant to create a set of games with a common underlying theme, each uniquely shaped by our own interpretation based on our skillsets, preferences, and life experiences. So now the question becomes, how do we make a theme that promotes this kind of thinking?

Well, I believe the theme should be vague. When a theme is overly constrained, it leads to fewer interpretations of the theme, which leads to fewer interesting games. This is especially true when the theme implies a certain type of play, or forces participants to adhere to a certain skill set. Take “The power of music”, for example. Naturally, it’s going to imply a rhythm game, right? Or focuses on an amazing soundtrack? Or at least one with a heavy emphasis on musicianship or musical allusions? Well, not everyone is able or willing to make a rhythm game. Not everyone is musically talented to write their own songs. Heck, some people don’t even like listening to music! And there are tons of themes that force jammers to use a certain skillset: “Combine 2D and 3D assets” -not everyone can use a 3D game engine; “Jump is also attack” – not everyone wants to make a platforming game; “Amazing story” – not everyone wants to write a story. My personal litmus test for this stage is, “can I think of a platforming game, a visual novel, a puzzle game, and a first-person shooter using this theme? Can it work with both a multi-person team project and a solo dev with only 12 hours to work?” If yes, we can move onto the next stage.

In contrast to the previous paragraph, I also think the theme shouldn’t be too vague. As the rules outlined, the community enjoys seeing everyone’s interpretation of the same theme. This means the theme should be strong enough that it can penetrate through the entire design of a project. Thus themes like “based on song lyrics” and “anarchy / no theme” are terrible themes since, by definition, there will be absolutely no obvious underlying connecting thread to all the games (and, in the latter's case, doesn't help overcome the 'blank page' problem)

I also believe the theme should add to the design of games in a meaningful way. Superfluous additions or constraints like “2-colour palette” or “female protagonist” could be applied to practically any game, and doesn’t promote idea generation in the prototyping phase. And, combined with what I said before, it should be up to the participant to decide in which format they want to interpret it. Do they want to interpret “Sacrifices need to be made” as a gameplay mechanic, a narrative element, or just a basic platformer with demonic cult graphics? I personally consider the last one to be a cop-out, but I still believe that this cop-out should always exist for the beginners who are unable or unwilling to make anything besides basic platformers.

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Okay, so we’ve determined what makes a good theme, but what makes a bad theme? Beyond not adhering to the above axioms, a bad theme can be identified with one or more of the following:

-Repeating a theme from a previous Ludum Dare. Many of us are veterans of multiple Ludum Dares, and want to see innovation in the theme selection. Plus, what would be the purpose of choosing a theme in the first place if we’re just going to recycle one from last time?

-The scope is too large. Do you really expect people to create an MMORPG from scratch in 48 hours? Or write their own rendering code to “mix 2D and 3D”? Especially egregious are the ones that specifically ask to include too much stuff – “Feature creep”, for one. Or “The 4th dimension”, where half the jam could be spend just learning what a hypercube is.

-Inappropriate topics. This event is for everyone. We don’t want to alienate any portion of our friends by choosing a topic that is violent, sexual, illegal, controversial, or otherwise inappropriate for this jam. I will add in religion and politics to this list as well, as talking about those topics on the internet is sure to end badly. (Note that I’m not against these themes in your game, I just don’t believe they should be the focus of every game)

-Themes that are too common and are, frankly, pathetic. Some themes are just too weak to generate many truly innovative designs. “You are the weapon”, “Only 2 button controls”, “good thing is now bad”; these themes show up multiple times at each LD, and they never get chosen for a reason. I’ll also add themes that, once you think about it, are just basic video game logic. “Start with nothing” – as opposed to all the games that give all the weapons all at once? Or simple subversions of video game logic. They're cheesy and overdone, guys. “You are the villain”, “You are the princess”, “Player cannot move” – why even specify a ‘player’ when there are puzzle games that don’t, strictly speaking, have one?

-Niche references to other media. Not everyone watches JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, most people won’t know what you’re talking about when you talk about making a game based on enemy Stands. Even if you quickly explain it to them, they’re only going to have a basic idea of what that is, how are they going to generate an amazing cohesive idea from limited knowledge? This is especially true with memes, as they also carry the risk of being outdated by the time the jam actually occurs. In short, if people have to Google your theme, it’s not a good theme.

-The title is too darn long. Generally, the longer the title is, the more it’s going to overdefine the game design and produce similar entries. Looking through the past posts, “Take a feature from a dimension, and remake it in another one” sticks out to me. The fact it mentions dimensions indicates using 2D and 3D, but also that the game should be more technical in nature, when many people just want to make simple platformers. I’ve also seen things like “Limitations (can’t go beyond a certain level)” being submitted, where the unbracketed text is too vague to really generate cool ideas but the bracketed text is overdefining the theme (in this case, “level” suggests arcade stages or RPG leveling). Combined, the theme is unwieldly to say and look at, not to mention making the unbracketed text redundant.

-The title is too darn short. From the opposite perspective, making the theme just a single word is sure to make it too vague to really inspire outside-the-box thinking. How many games require you to “destroy” or “survive” something? And what exactly do you expect me to make an “unlimited” amount of? and for what purpose? And how do other games exclude concepts like “light” or “shadows” such that specifically making a game with them is supposed to make me put on my thinking cap?

-Anything with misspellings or bad grammar. This is kind of petty for me, but when you’re trying to sort through 3000 themes, anything that could help make the selection process easier will be helpful. Correct spelling, proper capitalization, using words instead of numbers for numbers below 20, anything that could be held against a theme should be. Plus, if everyone voted like this, there’d be more cohesion on whether “Only Two Buttons”, “only two buttons”, “only 2 buttons”, “Only 2 buttons”, and “only 2 butons” gets to go past the slaughter.

-You don’t enjoy the theme. Just because something is technically good doesn’t mean you have to like it. If you don’t want to work with a specific theme, simply don’t vote for it. You don’t need to explain yourself. Even if it’s just a gut feeling, it’s okay to throw that theme away. We’ve got 3000, we can manage without it.

So, yeah. That's my personal guide to choosing a good theme. Do you agree with me? Based on some of the other posts I've seen posted in the past couple of days, I certainly know a few of you disagree with me on parts. I'd like to hear your opinions in the comments. Maybe we can finally make the theme selection process tolerable for once!

(...or we can just give up and turn Ludum Dare into "Floating Islands: The Game Jam")