I've always strived to pack my games, including the one for this jam, with as much content and as many mechanics as possible — to make them big and complex. But during this jam, I noticed so many small but interesting games. They don't occupy you for a long time, but they deliver a concentrated dose of gameplay and emotions.
Which kind of games do you prefer: big or small?
I feel that for a game jam, you already go into every game knowing that they will be small because of how short a time frame it was made in. Due to this, I focus on the gameplay, if it's fun and has some amount of variety, you could be playing it for hours despite being relatively small and simple. If you try to go too big, its more likely that it's not fully polished and not as fun, therefore even if it might have 2h of content, you might only play for 30mins before getting bored and leaving.
I've done both for jams. I found that I was much less stressed putting this one together (small scope puzzle game). My last game was basically a metroidvania demo level (so much terrain mapping and lighting to do) and had so much going into it that the bug hunting was never ending. This one I just got to have fun with building puzzles once I got the original layout set up. I think I'll aim for smaller, better designed games in the future for jams. Then maybe I'll expand them out afterwards. Big games are impressive, but usually pretty shallow gameplay-wise due to the time limits.
