Achievements and you
This might look like a "tree found in forest" type post, however, I still want to share this.
Achievements and leaderboards turned out to be powerful tools, even for a jam game.
Recently I've put up an extra edition of our game, LiNX Elektrika (click to play hint-hint wink-wink), on Newgrounds. Side note: Newgrounds is BASED. After giving it some thought, I've also incorporated some of the feedback seen here on the LDJam (mainly, ironed out the extreme difficulty curve) as well as added support for Newgrounds' very own MEDAL and LEADERBOARD systems
Very quickly I found out that this funky little feature gives me a very good spread of what people do in my game, how and when. By checking my leaderboards top to bottom and bottom to top, I get to see how far people get in my game, and by checking the medals I can see the involvement for more challenging parts, and draw conclusions on what people actually enjoy doing.
Right now, for each level, I have 2 achievements - "complete it" and "overachieve in it."
I noticed that basicaly nobody (other than achievement hunters, which do exist!) has the achievement for overachieving on the first level, where it doesn't come naturally, but much more stick around on later levels - which checks out.
It turned into a strong analytics feature (yada-yada metrics analytics) for finding out what people are willing to do, such as the achievement for looping 5 times, nobody got it yet.
This is both fun and informative! If uploading to a supporting platform, do add achievements!