Hi, I just saw that there will be a mandatory theme this time and I was wondering why. 

Themes are cool for short jams where you need to come up with a game idea pretty quickly, but as this jam is running for 3 months, it seems constricting and may lead to more similar games. 

That said, I can't wait for this jam to start, as the previous GB compo was so much fun (and lead to my first released Game Boy Color game). 

We are experimenting with a theme this year for a couple reasons:

1. We feel like it gives an edition of the compo more "character", making it very distinguishable from other years
2. It helps to make sure that people work on the core "creative" part of the games in the specified time frame since they cannot know the theme beforehand
3. We want to see if it may help in giving some initial direction in the creative process of the participants
4. The theme was intentionally chosen to be not specific and enable broad interpretations

Thanks for clarifying, I can understand your reasons behind the decision now.