The point of jams and similar challenges is participate at all, not to do it good.
I had multiple successful entries that can be barely called games.
Many people seem to seriously misunderstand the expectations of jam games and compare themselves with full teams with budgets, professional experience and months of work. Yes, I’ve seen fantastic jam games even in short jams, but they were done by very experienced people who were good at team & time management, among other things.
For reference, this was my first gdtv jam entry that got me the course. Maybe the level is expected to be higher nowadays, but it is still lower than newcomers assume.