I was surprised I haven't seen anyone discussing how they actually factored in the overall theme and any of the various challenges. So...go on now, give us a link to your submission and tell us how you coordinated the various thematic aspects into your project.

The Asylum's Detective: https://itch.io/jam/extra-credits-game-jam-6/rate/739235

So for our project we utilized the theme of Take Care in two literal fashions:

1. You're in an asylum, a mental hospital where they failed to take proper care of one of their patients and she went missing.

2. The whole story happens because one of the characters doesn't properly take care of themselves (self care is very important, remember that - especially during jams) and this is what causes them to wind up at the asylum in the first place.

Likewise we had a few obligue/figurative references to 'Take Care' as well:

1. The Highlander's uncle wasn't prosecuted by police, so they didn't 'take care' of the situation.

2. The Soldier wasn't at his post with his comrades because he cut his foot and had to go to the rear of have it 'taken care' of.

3. The Teacher was pushed past her breaking point and murdered her students - 'taking care' of them in the most mobster-ish sense.

Likewise we also met 3 of the 5 challenges (we didn't use Core and used waaay to many colors for the DOS challenge).

Extra Historian: The game is set during the 1918 Flu Epidemic.

Extra Distance: Due to the 1918 Epidemic half the people the detective can interview are behind closed doors due to quarantine.

Extra Translation: The cell of the 'Missing Patient' is filled with crazed scribbles of a fake language.

Now for some #gamedev talk...why and how did we meet the challenges?

Historian: Well, this one was easy - I literally finished playing Don'tNod's game, "Vampyr" like the day the jam began. So my mind was wrapped totally around the 'Spanish Flu' (there are two references to Vampyr in our project, BTW, let me know if you spot them). Given the correlation between 1918 and 2020, I felt it was a fitting theme.

Distance: This was a two-birds-one-stone kind of situation - on the one hand it fit the 'Social Distance' guideline, and on the other it meant we didn't need to make sprites or rooms for three of the characters.

Translation: The person who belongs in that cell (no spoilers) had recently been in France, but is also going through some serious mental trauma and isn't in their right mind. So...the scribbles all over the wall are in French - except it's written backwards, and also at a fairly grade school level because I, myself, and not fluent in French. So it's almost gibberish to begin with, then we flipped the sentences backwards.

So there's our process on things. The whole point of this jam is to flex your gamedev minds and muscles - tell us your thought process on your own submissions. =D

Seems interesting enough, so I'll go over a bit of the process behind our game, Skávo, from my perspective. I, as the pixel artist went into this knowing I wanted to try some kind of Roman or Greek style, because I'd never done it before specifically, and it seemed like a fun thing to try.  As the extra challenges were announced, I was originally thinking some kind of stealthy arcade thing set around the Antonine Plague. Despite not knowing about germs, communal diseases and quarantines (although they were not called that yet) were understood to an extent (although the full extent is somewhat debated).

And of course as a pixel artist who has played around with limited palettes before, I had to take the palette challenge. In the end I felt the orange set the mood best, so I went with that.

But as the actual theme of "Take Care" was announced, the 3 of us threw around some other ideas until "Archeology" came up, and with taking care of fragile artifacts as a core game loop. We were all on board for it, and then discussed a few possible ideas for the digging phase, and it was close between Minesweeper, and Picross, but we ultimately went with a Minesweeper top down style.

We were also considering some kind of third translation phase, where you collected enough artifacts and had to piece together some kind of puzzle to translate something, but it was a bit too much for a 72 hour jam, so it was cut in order to better refine what we already had.

Some of these are a bit of a stretch, but that's the setup for how we tried to meet the various challenges.

Take Care: Taking care not to break delicate artifacts as you excavate them.

CGA 4 Colours: With one small exception, the entire game is built out of a CGA approved 4 colour palette.

History: We're digging up Ancient Greek Relics here! Everything you dig up is based off an actual Greek Relic (although very pixelly and simplistic).

Translation: The game uses Greek Numerals which you have to 'translate' in your head to use as a clue. Also the Title "Skávo" is Greek for Dig.

Social Distancing: You're out there digging up relics alone, doesn't get more distancing than that! (Ok we didn't really do this one at all).

Multiplayer: Obviously this was meant as an online Co-op thing to promote Core. But with the simple inclusion of a scoring system, and a high score screen, there is a bit of pseudo multiplayer in the form of friendly competition. After the jam ends, might even be cool to update the in game scores with what people in the comments have gotten!

All in all, while not some major game or anything, I'm really happy with how our 72 Hour Project came out. Thanks to having a small and experienced team, we were able to make a fun little game, and if you'd like to check it out, you can over at https://itch.io/jam/extra-credits-game-jam-6/rate/739112 

Edit: some grammar typos, whoops.

I think for many of the games, its quite obvious as to how the main theme is incorporated. Also, since the theme is TAKE CARE, its pretty easy for someone to associate it to most games even though their interpretations may be different from the what the developer originally intended. I think its interesting to see this.

For my game, I think how the theme fits is quite clear. You're a Ninja stealing plans from an enemy Samurai camp while remaining undetected. So, you have to TAKE CARE so as to not get caught. It also incorporates the following challenges:

1) Extra History: set in the Sengoku period inspired by Extra History - Warring States - Ep #4. ( checkout the wanted posters! )

2) Extra Distance: if you stay close to a samurai for long or get too close, they will detect you and finish you off.

3) Extra Retro: I used this CGA palette for the game. ( except a darker shade on the pop-up menu)

If you have time, please check it out and leave some feedback.

In my game, Fall of Bronze, the Theme "Take Care" was implemented in two ways. Firstly, you have to "Take Care" of a Nation during the Bronze Age Collapse. However, given the extremely unstable time of the Bronze Age Collapse, you have to "Take Care" with every action you take, lest you begin your downfall(this is implemented by there being a limited number of actions each "Season"/turn).

For the Extra History theme, I used the Bronze Age collapse.  There are included several things like famines, earthquakes and of course the Sea People, in accordance with the Extra Credits videos on the Bronze Age collapse and that of Historia Civilis.

Unintentionally, for Extra Retro, I made it all in a depressing color(except for icons for individual provinces).

Though I did not have the time to fully implement the Extra Translation challenge, I (as nerdy as this sounds) had a Constructed Language laying around so I translated a very small amount of things to it(Three words)

As for Extra Distance, the lack of a tutorial really did distance some players from the game!

For me I started out with some ideas for social infection games, and was messing around with core to try and get mechanics working in a simple state. After over a day of working, I figured out I wasn't familiar enough with Core, Lua, or 3d games in general to be able to get something into a workable state in time. Anxiety started to hit and overwhelm me,  but I managed to push through and refocus myself. My goal was to complete something and it was still very achievable. I fell back to what I knew the most about, rpg maker, and  part of what was nice about falling back to something  more familiar was trying new things with it.  Captive is the game I managed to complete:

 https://itch.io/jam/extra-credits-game-jam-6/rate/739230

THEME:  For the theme I went with a use what you know approach. I have BAD anxiety that completely cripples me some days, and I've had to learn many tricks to get myself functional when it comes up.  I've wanted to make something around it to share my experiences with people for awhile, but there is always a difficulty in explaining abstract things to people.  So take care of your anxieties was the theme, and I used a prisoner analogy to try and make it relatable. 

Extra History: I threw in an easter egg from one of my favorite quotes from the web series in a slightly off path place. 

Extra Retro: The extra retro challenge felt more of a stylized art challenge.  I've played enough retro games with those pallets, if you don't have a strong vision when using them they become vomit inducing. I wasn't going to be able to go that way.

Extra Distance: It's kinda there, kinda not. The goal is too escape and put as much distance between you and your prison as possible, but I do offer an option to confront your warden. 

Extra  Translation: There are tiles with a magic language on them used for one of the spells. An NPC that can't use magic will reference them as gibberish at one point.

My own extra challenge, no music: This was partially brought on by time constraints and partially because I had never tried it and it sounded interesting to do.  I added in ambient sounds and tweaked them for each scene. I wanted to do a little more with them, but exhaustion hit me too hard by the end and I just had to accept what I had. 

I really liked the discussion Matt and Arthur had about escort mission on a theme reveal stream. So I started to explore ideas of how to make an escort mission into something more original and unique. It clicked quite quickly, and I ended up with a puzzle game where you, as an AI overseing an underground lab, need to TAKE CARE of a little girl and guide her to the exit, having only a limited control over that lab.

https://oneir0mancer.itch.io/cold-light

Also, I tried to incorporate the idea that “Take care” can stand for a farewell to someone, but it’s kinda only at the end of the game.

I didn’t really try to meet any challenges except for one of them that I really liked.

Although I think I also naturally met Extra Distance challenge: There is only one character besides you, the player, and you are separated with a screen of your computer, as well as thousands of meters of concrete and steel. In fact, you can’t even communicate directly, and need to come up with some inventive method of communication.

The challenge I purposefully went for was Extra Translation: Since you can’t communicate directly and the only things you can control are the lights of this underground lab, you have to invent a whole new language to communicate by blinking those lights. Well, rather you need to assign a particular sequence of lights to a particular action, but I’d still say it’s coming up with a language.

All in all, I really tried to achieve the feeling that even if you really try to take care of someone, you are never really in control of their actions.

My game is Rely (https://keeptrying.itch.io/rely), a cute-themed CGA colored Shooter and it was actually the second concept i went through during the jam!

I started by making a puzzle game, but after 4 hours I had to get the guts to scrap it as the main mechanic was too complicated to be reasonably done in 72 hours, cause it involved too much AI with an element being escorted in each puzzle.

So then, after being pretty bummed out due to this, I thought that a complete change of genre was going to help clear the air, so I went through and thought how could a theme such as "Take Care" fit in a Shoot 'Em Up, which was a theme that even though I like a lot and am familiar with, never played much with as a developer.

It felt natural to make a game where you controlled two elements simultaneously and one defended another. The tough part was figuring out how to make the movement intuitive because controlling and shooting with both would just be impossible. So after trying lots and lots of movement types out, such as only in straight lines, mirrored, one at a time with a key for shifting, the circular one felt really really good cause one of them naturally protected the back of the one shooting, in every possible position. From there "Take Care" took an immediate meaning as having a playable character taking care of another by acting as a barrier.

I started since the beginning with the intention of doing the Extra Retro challenge, cause it's just an art style that I can't get enough of!

It's really amazing how much limitation breeds our creativity during these events. In no other circunstance would I think of this same concept if I didn't have the conditions given here!

Some really great stories coming out here. Glad to hear all these interesting takes on the different challenges and themes, and your reasoning behind it. Really shows the diversity in game makers out there.

Keep 'em coming, folks!