Hello,
This is also my 3rd game jam. For what it is worth I feel like I have gotten better for every one that I have done. I think it is absolutely nuts that 14,000+ people signed up, and 6,000+ finished games. Just the sheer audience here has made Spinsanity my best release so far (it basically outperformed my last itch.io release in 5 days what took my last game 5+ months!). Everyone has been great about giving constructive feedback and useful advice!
"My game isn't playable in the browser and has to be downloaded" - Unfortunately this is a kiss of death for any game jam, not just this one. It adds a lot of pain points:
1) The browser might stop the download saying "Not many people have downloaded this, are you sure?!"
2) Windows Defender might stop you from even opening the file
3) While I'm sure there aren't many bad actors, the threat is always in the back of the mind "Maybe this is malware."
The first two you have to manually override. It isn't hard but it's just an extra step, and a place for someone to say no.