Questions about "does this or that count" seem common on here, and the answer is often "well maybe, maybe not", or unofficial, or debated where it's not even well-seen.

Saying "you might get worse scores on the color category", without a solid ruling on things, means everyone is going to rate going by their own wildly varying interpretations of the rules.

I understand the idea of not wanting to be too restrictive, and not wanting to scare people off, but sometimes people aren't trying to game the system and are genuinely trying to understand what is or isn't in the spirit of the rules. (Also sometimes the constraints give something to work from.) Being too loose about it can be demotivating, if we don't know if what we're making even counts and it's up to whichever random interpretations from the handful of people that happen to rate it.

I wouldn't say anything and don't expect this to be received well, but having only started with a few jams, I'm noticing a pattern of "Is X allowed?" being answered with "Iunno, maybe, just do whatever."

I would like to start by saying that this is a friendly game jam with no prizes. People shouldn't be too hung up on the scores and try to follow the jam rules to the best of their ability.

That being said I think it's just the alpha channel rule that seems to lead to confusions. Without it the rules are simple:

You only ever display 2 colors on screen at any given time, regardless of the colors or if they change throughout the game = 5 stars.