In summary of this thread:
The system is flawed, people more so

Somewhat sarcastic jokes aside everyone will inevitably have their own subjective bias towards things; what is original/etc. to me is not necessarily the same to anyone else. Maybe I won't agree with them, but it's hard to say someone's opinion is wrong in most cases. And yes, some people did make games based on one of Mark's examples, but is that so bad? It's not original in the basic idea, if you really want to look at it that way, but how it's executed can be. 

Besides, end of the day most (if not all) of us put a lot of heart and soul into making our games, so things are going to sting (to put it midly).
And I mean, what would you rather take from this: the results of an arbitrary rating poll, or the fun making your game and seeing the cool things other people made?

Honestly speaking:
Is this partly to convince my tired childish mind? Yes.
Am I satisfied with my result? No, but I'd say most of that stems from knowing what I couldn't add, couldn't change, couldn't fix, and the pointless worry of "would that have improved things for me?"
And in the end, what do a few stars really say about your own game?
I'd say not a lot; I got much more from feedback in the comments, and I can actually do something constructive with that. Jam's over, doesn't mean I'm finished with the game, not by a long shot~

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Side note: if it helps, look at the rating system like Amazon reviews. I'll leave it to y'all how to interpret that~

Thank you!

This is a good concept: managing your power usage under fire can require some quick clicking
As things are presently, personally I'd say the enemies spawn too infrequently to pose too much of a threat, and moving doesn't seem to benefit you much.
Perhaps if your shields/weapon had a charge level which needed time to recover?
...well take from that what you will ^^;

Perhaps needed some fine tuning on the enemies: I wasn't blocking very well but made it to the end with about 4/5ths of my health.
Otherwise, an interesting take on the theme, and nicely drawn artwork too~

This is the first top-down shooter where the "only one" theme is applied to the enemies, and it works so well!
Barely got up to 21ks though ^^;
Great job, this was a lot of fun~

An unusual but cool tactics game~
Not yet sure there's much benefit to using as many tiles as allowed (I cleared it using only two spaces) but at least there's the option
nice work!

This was a lot of fun!
Everything was clear, intuitive, and new mechanics were introduced well. Great job~

An interesting mechanic. For once I'd say the game was almost too easy XD (rather than difficult as with a good number I've played)
Great fun~

That was unexpected.... but an important message nonetheless
Great work with this

Any more feedback on mine, than I have already, would be greatly appreciated~
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462840

A deceptively simple puzzle game, very easy to get things wrong XD
As a point of note: explicitely stating the splitting mechanic would have been better; I nearly passed this by as "impossible" because it wasn't explicitely obvious what to do on the second level, sorry ^^;
Which would have been a pity, this is a good game

Nice take on the theme; a little tricky reloading when enemies are bearing down on you (but it'd help if I didn't get the keys wrong!)
This was fun, great work~

Couldn't last the minute but this is a great shooter: having to catch the missle afterwards was a nice touch, and quite frantic when it pings the other side of the screen XD
Nice work~

Sorry, they spawn more than I'd intended~
And the Ikaruga similarity was an accident of design: I went with the colour theme and there felt like only one way to take it ^^;

Thanks for playing!

I'm surprised this was forgiving as to allow you to continue after dying
Though with how er... 'well' I could keep the ship where I wanted, perhaps just as well XD

Quite unforgiving, but having to memorise a map in a second is a nice take on the theme~
Broken lines was really evil though XD

A fun idea, the art looks great in it's minimalism (though I did mistake some tiles for ladders)~

Movement is way overboard though: makes it hard to move precisely and I ran into things a lot because I couldn't stop. Reading the description I can see why you went for it, but with zero acceleration and at this speed it makes things harder than they need to be.
Which is a pity, because honestly there's little else I'd have to pick at (without being petty). Took me a while to realise I needed the mob with the red eyes, but that's more me being unobservant ^^;

Interesting concept, I like the pixel art~
Boss was hard to deal with though perhaps the spear isn't the best thing to fight an elephant with ^^;

Sure is convenient having all these glass weapons around!
Ahem.
Jokes aside this was pretty cool. I like the minimalist graphics and how even the glowy sword I found was utterly useless after one hit XD
Good job~!

That you crafted such a melancholic, emotional experience into so little time and space honestly amazes me. Really well done~!

Thank you for playing, glad you liked it~

At the time I felt that would be a bit too easy: the idea being your ship was damaged or something like that.
In hindsight though, the idea of fighting across three separate colour spectrums does make it weird getting damaged in the other ones ^^;

Quite an interesting game. Perhaps a bit too easy to spam 'infect' though; I took over a vast swathe of the map like that, barely needed to produce infected ants or move mushrooms around
Not having the movement keys behind a menu would be nice, but that's a minor gripe~
Nice work

I didn't intend as many of the large enemies to spawn so that doesn't help ^^;
I did consider being immune yourself, but I figured that might be too easy (though instead I went too far the other way, whoops).
Thanks for playing~

I made a semi-bullet hell game where colour matters as you defend yourself.
Hope you have fun: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462840

Brutally difficult but fun to play~
Especially like the simple colour palette and artwork (makes the rocket launcher immensely satisfying to use too)

Nice!

Not a lot of room left now, but I made a little something.
Love seeing what craziness people have created there's a lot of amazing stuff here~
Even if it ended up being fairly minecrafty, to do that much in 48 hours is quite the feat

Definitely not an easy game, but that makes clearing a level all the more rewarding. There isn't a lot of leeway though, which can make getting the precise timings an exercise in frustration and repetition.
I also found that activating your ability too soon after releasing X caused it to trigger the next one along, but when you knew, you could effectively exploit it a bit~

Nicely done, I had a lot of fun playing~!

Great graphics, and a fun little game.
The last level got a bit frustrating though: precise platforming in the dark is tricky when there's virtually no reference points. Getting lodged into a wall by a moving platform wasn't fun either but still: I stuck through to completing it which, for me, means you did a good job making something you want to keep playing
I look forward to seeing where you take this concept~

Very interesting and well executed. The difficulty curve perhaps needs a bit of adjusting, but 48 hours wasn't a lot of time.

The very visual way of showing your inputs were used up was a nice touch (especially in a later level that, admittedly I got stuck on)

A little frustrating having to do over after falling for the umpteenth time. Personally would have prefered a separate button for the dash (even if just "hold to trigger", after the number of times I dashed without actually intending to)
But that's me, and it's your game (and I'd probably have gotten used to it after a while)
It was hard to tell where to go a lot of the time but that isn't a bad thing, it was fun to explore, the parts I could reach. And when I wasn't dashing accidentally, the jumping mechanics worked quite well
Guess whatever was at the top shall remain a mystery for now~

Unforgiving, would be my one-word summary. Generally I found if I missed, that was it, you rarely had chance to collect the harpoon before getting smushed.
Though running around helped, it was harder when the horned cubes started spawning.
Had fun though, even with my bad aim~

Thanks, glad you liked it~

Unfortunately with the engine all I have is two arrows and two buttons so this is about all I can do there ^^;
I did have a couple of half-baked ideas on how to tell which layer they were on, but they never really seemed to work (nor did I have time to test much).
Different silhouette's is an interesting one I didn't consider; I might play with that, thank you

Surreal but well made, definitely one of the best this jam~

Thanks: spent overlong making sure everything worked well (hence why it's fairly bare-bones ^^;)

Definitely need to tune down the difficulty though

Took me a while to get used to the input, but once I did I had a lot of fun. The game's tricky, but of the sort where all you need is practice. This is great~
Live the pixel art too: well drawn, and everything is clearly set apart from eachother.

Had a lot of fun with this one~
Took a few dozen tries to survive until the end, but even failure was hillarious in it's own right
Sorry if mentioned before but I did find that occasionally the hammer doesn't hit the gong; happened the first time and I honestly got the wrong impression until I tested to see if it actually made a sound ^^;
Still, a minor hickup in an entertaining game, nice job!

Card games aren't something I'm good with, so probably the wrong person playing XD
Still, the concept works really well~ Nice one

Thanks~!

definitely something that takes a lot of practice.
The concept has been done well, though it's really unforgiving. I didn't mind on the first few levels but a full reset later on was fairly brutal. Despite the difficulty I don't personally think this really needs much changing in terms of the actual design, but perhaps some checkpoint markers might help on the larger levels (and maybe better character visibility in the dark).
Still, a challenging take on the theme and one I'll likely come back to after voting to finish~