Hey all, Niterich here. You might remember me from the last Ludum Dare, where I made a post about what I thought made a good or a bad theme for Ludum Dare. You can read it here, but as a quick recap:

The theme SHOULD:

• serve as a starting point for ideas to help people to overcome the "blank sheet of paper" problem

• be flexible enough to be made into to a video game in any genre, scope, and developer experience level; and with a number of possible interpretations so we don't get the same game 5000 times

• be specific enough that each game can be identified as coming from this specific jam. Many people here enjoy seeing other people's different takes on the same theme

• impact the game in a meaningful way, and not just as an artificial limitation or visual gimmick

The theme SHOULD NOT:

• repeat a theme from a previous Ludum Dare

• specifically be too large in scope - we can't all make a MMORPG in a weekend!

• be explicitly violent, sexual, illegal, controversial, or otherwise inappropriate for a public, worldwide jam for people of all ages, races, religions, and sexual preferences. You can make your game whatever you want, but don't force others to work with a topic they don't agree with

• be a commonly ignored theme from past Ludum Dares. From experience, these seem to mostly be simple inversions of video game logic ("two button controls", "you are the villain/weapon/princess", "start with nothing", etc.)

• be a joke theme that never get chosen, but always clog up the theme slaughter round (looking at you, "floating islands"... which in itself isn't an awful theme but it gets suggested and joked so often it's annoying)

• be a niche reference or a relatively unknown concept, including memes. If most people have to Google your theme, it's not a good one!

So what do you guys think? Do you think I'm being too tough? Too lenient? Is there any criteria you would add or remove?