My game Green Screen is a puzzle game where you need to remember nodes to find them among other ones. Initially there was 3 categories: signal, frequency, data. Each category contained value that player had to remember and find. Difficulty was the problem. Frequency could be greater or less than a random value, Data contained 2 possible values to remember, Signal had 1.

When my friends tried this game for the first time, they had hard time remembering everything and finding it among 20 nodes + the more values categories had, the more often weird bugs occured.

I didn't want to frustrate player with excessive difficulty and extra bugs, so I decided to simplify the game by reducing possible category values. It helped and bugs disappeared, game became easier. So much easier that there is barely any challenge in it now.

The question is, do I really need to make challenging game for the jam, or 3-4 minutes of light gameplay without too many variables to remember would be enough? What is more precious: lack of frustrating bugs or more interesting complex puzzle for the jam? Would be glad to discuss it with anybody

My game - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/green-screen