Things that I look for in a good theme:

• Inspiration. I want the theme to motivate/excite developers, but at the same time it shouldn't spoonfeed them a particular idea/genre. This eliminated "garden" and "fragile" (as these are not inspiring for me personally).

• Encourages varying game types and ideas. I want to see gameplay variance in the different games - and the theme should push people towards that, instead of causing repetitive mechanics to emerge. This eliminated "you are the power source", "turn a violent genre nonviolent", "1 minute to prepare", "side effects", "momentum", and "keep it alive", as I feel that all of these would make the overall pool of games monotonous by encouraging similar game mechanics.

• Challenges developers to be creative with their game mechanics. Themes that are too simplistic tend to enable developers to skirt past them by simply working it into the backdrop/backstory (granted, you can do this with almost any theme but some themes make it almost impossible to avoid). I'd like to see you really adjust your gameplay, not just your graphics or your backstory. This eliminated "abandoned world", "outdated technology", and "ruins".

This leaves "Dreams", "Decay", "Automation", and "Connections". (I downvoted "Dreams" in the screenshot because I didn't find it inspiring at the time but I think I'm going to go back and change that vote.) The other themes I feel satisfy all of the above criteria, and could be really fun and interesting themes in general.

Don't get me wrong, I'd still enjoy pretty much any of the other themes I eliminated... maybe with the exception of "turn a violent genre nonviolent". I just... don't understand it. What in the world are you supposed to do with that one?

Here I've compiled an average for each theme using all of the screenshots of final round voting that I could find, both on this website and on Twitter.

"Side effects" has consistently held the first place spot for nearly the entire voting period so far, though by a razor-slim margin. "Connections" and "Dreams" follow closely in 2nd and 3rd places, respectively.

"Outdated technology" and "Ruins" lie comfortably at the bottom of the rankings.

Edit: I should mention that this is a count of 28 ballots. Hardly an amazing sample size, but it's something. I'll be curious to see how closely this matches the final tally.

You might be thinking "gee, another business management game".

Well, yes. But you're also gonna have bigger problems...

This is my first Ludum Dare, so I don't know how common installers are expected to be, but I've already downloaded - and then promptly skipped - 3 or 4 games because they were all installation wizards. I really, really don't want to install onto my computer a dozen different jam games that I might only ever play for a few minutes - meanwhile there are thousands of other non-installer games to me to rate.

Each of the installers that I've skipped so far were from GameMaker, which (at least when I last used it a year or two ago) had what was basically a single checkbox that allowed you to compile to a standalone .exe instead of an installer. Maybe this is just something of an oversight from developers? Or is there possibly some kind of technical/performance reason for doing this..?

Either way I usually just leave a comment kindly requesting a standalone client, then find a different game to rate. Does anyone else use a similar approach?

Drop a link to your entry here and I will give it a play/rating, along with a paragraph or two of what I liked and what I thought could be improved. I'll prioritize entries with fewer existing ratings but I should be able to get around to everyone eventually. Windows or HTML5 is fine - no installers please.

I'd also appreciate it if you could give feedback on my own entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-empty-cone , but you're under no obligation or pressure to do so.

Edit: yes I'm still doing this, please feel free to comment below. Just don't expect me to be able to get around to it right away, lol.