The game I'm making for this Jam isn't a brand new idea, but it's based on one that I have previously though about for a past DevJam that I couldn't complete because, back then, I had barely 2.5 days of free time out of the 10~ish days. For this one, I had the 3 first days during which I couldn't put as much time (if at all) as I wanted, but that leave the remaining 7 fully open. Also, the idea/concept have evolved within the months since I originally had it with more realistic & realizable goals than what I originally had.
It's just that the theme of this jam coincidentally fit way too well with that old idea/concept I had to let it go while said idea doesn't really fit well for a commercial game in today's market or, at least, not the "Lite" version that I'm working on for the Jam.
The game I'm working on as a "Lite" version for the Jam is played primarily via 2 menus: 1 menu where you upgrade a machine and one menu where you have limited time to order the machine to do something after which it will attempt to do what you ordered with a day & night cycle. Depending on the machine's successes and failure, you acquire funds which allows you to upgrade the machine further to survive longer and so on and forth.
Basically, the game I'm working on is something akin to a NASA Rover simulator on a unknown planet. You have a limited window, each day, to give orders to the rover to move around and collect samples or discover new things (which gives you credits for upgrading the next one once this one breaks down). It's basically RTS walking simulator where your goal is to find hidden treasures while you slowly die as you move around with randomized events that, for the most part, goes against you (with a really few exceptions).
Each play-through is done on a randomized 512x512 sized micro-sectors board and the rover can only travel a limited amount of sectors per day on top of actually requiring you to give it order to do something (unless a certain upgrade is added) to interact with things. For example, if you give it an order to travel in a relatively straight line as far as it can within a day, it will damage itself over the distance (its wheels durability drops down) and while it might discover something along the way, you'll only find out about it the next day during the limited-timed "input action" phase and you might have to ask it to move back on its tracks to the discovery to actually analyze it. Hence, the gameplay loop is about choices & results of those choices versus the risks of actions or even inaction.