Slightly optimistic Nutty here! Round 2! Here we go! Bit more decisive than last time... uh.. yeah!
*you can only move or see, not both (-1): *I see @pov hates this theme too (unless the theme names were never fixed for grammar/ English anyway). I mean, it's basically everything I hate in a theme: too confusing, too long, too boring. Not much else to say.
*Magic, but at what cost? (0): * Very simple theme with a potential for a lot of variety: story wise and game play wise, Magic is a bit too general and generic for me, this has a nice pointer added to it, though it's not exactly my thing. I abstain!
*Alchemy (0): *I decided to do some research for a quick definition. All definitions point to the use of "Magic" which automatically drifts me away from this one. I would much prefer 'mixing' over Alchemy as there's a lot more variety that could be found right out of the bag (granted, it is a bit vague). Very meh for me.
*Darkness is your friend (-1): *Specifies that there must be darkness. Specifies that this darkness must be useful to the player in one way or another. Too restrictive for me, "Light" would have been a better noun to use since Light is generally used as a more general term (blasting with light, dim light, even no light which is basically darkness) while Darkness simply refers to a 'lack of' light.
*Gameplay described by title of a song (-1): *Stupid, Gimmicky, No - Moving on.
Ancient Technology (-1): sigh
*60 seconds (-1): *60 seconds what? 60 seconds to eat? 60 seconds to finish? 60 seconds to - it's too vague WAY too vague. Let me think of 3 games which are all wildly different to each other and barely use this theme but still fall under 60 seconds:
- A stock exchange game where depending on the way your characters interact with the world will affect how rival companies perform. Oh yeah, stock markets update every 60 seconds.
- A top down production line game where every 60 seconds more raw material is provided by you
- A simple web-page which has a counter which continuously goes down from 60 seconds to 0.
This theme will only work for meta-joke games.
*Fragile (+1): *I can see how some people will call this theme 'one word vague' however compared to themes such as, "Discovery" or "Magic", Fragile is definitely something with a more 'set' definition. While Electronic could almost be described as "Magic", Fragile doesn't have that same reach. Also I really like the idea of making a game where something breaks, or breaks easily. I like breaking things damn it!
*Corruption (+1): *I always liked games which explore the idea of corruption; Papers Please, Tropico, Just Cause; it's one of those things that's just perfect for a video-game, because no one wants to experience corruption, but the corrupt'er' is the one having all the fun. Less vague than Fragile too. So... there's that.
*Making Connections (+1): *A perfect theme if you ask me. Open for interpretations, services practically every genre while still clearly defining what the main purpose of the game should be. I hope this makes it to the finals. Connections could be seen as: physical, mental, implied. And then the question of "how" these connections are made. Favorite one of the bunch!
*Floating Islands (-1): *FOR GOD'S SAKE, WHY CAN'T THIS STUPID PISSING THEME JUST GO AWAY? WHY FLOATING ISLANDS? WHY MUST THE ISLAND BE FLOATING? WHY NOT JUST ISLANDS? IS THERE SOMETHING SO ATTRACTIVE ABOUT 'FLOATING' ISLANDS? AM I MISSING SOMETHING HERE? EVERY. SINGLE. DAMN. LUDUM DARE.
*Mythology (-1): *Ehh. Not my thing. Probably won't be attractive to a lot of other people either.
*Every play through builds on the last (-1): *Verging on game mechanic, just slightly off, still restricting as hell, also every time I read this theme I think of rogue-lites. Not the best impression for an 'interesting' theme.
*It's not a bug it's a feature (-1): *The word 'trash' isn't enough to describe this theme let me quickly hop on Thesaurus.com (not sponsored ;)) to find something synonymous. Ehh... balderdash, hogwash... malarkey? Sure!
*Decay (+1): *Basically the same as last LD:
This theme has amazing “Fill in the Blanks” potential. What - is decaying? Why - is it decaying? How - will it affect the game? Filling in the “it” part and in general answering the questions will create a huge pool of potential games. It also doesn’t completely dictate the flow of the game. You could make a game where one of the major game mechanics involve decay and it still would be in the bounds of the theme.
*Limited Resources (-1): *Too specific. I'm not sure how one measures how limited you are of resources especially since in most games your resource gain scales with how far you've made it. In Civ, if you make just +3 gold a turn at the start but then by the end you make +450 gold a turn (since that's just how the game works) how am I actively meant to measure how scarce I am of resources? It's not a measurable theme.
I'm honestly tempted to just go out next time round, suggest "Floating Islands", "4 Elements" and "Two Buttons" just so I can proudly say all 3 of my themes made it through. Every single time.
I have a theory. 'Floating Islands' is a planted honeypot theme and if you +1 it all of your votes are immediately discarded.
Hehe, besides the joke, the original art is made by Sebastian Wagner