Did you make a hard game? 

Was it intentionally hard? 

Or do other people need to "get good"?   xD

I've found that because of the tight deadline and gameplay being in constant flux, it's hard to give yourself time to do a proper balance pass before submission. There's always that one more thing to add or that killer bug that gets in the way.

Is it better to make time at the end or balance as you go? - or just wing it 

What strategies have people taken to try and tackle this, and what advice would you give to others?

We made a game designed to panic and rush player between multiple rooms but didn't give enough time to considering the impact of a first experience which lead the first play through being a bit confusing. In retrospect a more controlled introduction to each of the mechanics would have been ideal.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462790 

I think experience helps a lot. There's a timing element to my game and it's ended up being unenjoyable tight for some people. This was because I tested for myself, who knew the level layout perfectly and exploited it.

If you're working on a team, you can always have your team members test it. You could also take the time once you have the minimum viable product to make a build and send it to some friends and/or family. That way you can test your delivery, get some feedback, and still continue working.

Balance is tough when we don't have a ton of time to play test. I don't think my game is too hard since I've seen people beat it, but there are definitely some things i'm going to change once the rating period is over. 

It depends on the game of course, but my strategy was just to play each level over and over again. Even that is not ideal though, since as the creator of a level in a game you know the level very well while new players are just seeing it for the first time. Things that seem easy for you end up being difficult for other's because of this.

At the end of the day I think you gotta play test as much as you can and get it as good as possible then once it's released you'll figure out the things you missed. Unless of course you have people to test it out for you, then get as much of that as possible beforehand.

One way to do this is to define the core elements of your game when designing it, and separating them from the more advanced ones that perhaps are awesome, but are not really required for the minimal/core version. Once you've done this, estimate how much time it's going to take you to have it working, even if sort of buggy. Set a deadline for everything to work, and since this is the minimal version of your game, it shouldn't take that long; if it is, then you might want to rethink your idea (since it might not be achievable within 48 hours)  or try to separate again the core elements from the extended ones. You should aim to have your (very basic) game working by then. 

Ideally, at this point you have something you can show someone and have them test it. Make sure you tell them this is only an initial prototype and be very clear on what you want them to test (movement feel, difficulty, controls, jumping force, etc.). Even if it's just a square jumping around in a 2D plane, people can tell whether controls/movement/jumping feel good or not, so use this to your advantage and playtest your game!

After this, you can keep adding stuff and iterating on testable versions of your project. Now, because it's a jam, I know every developer is frantically making changes to the game all the time, but I do believe these small playtests give you a good baseline on what feels good and what doesn't.

I made a hard game and all the feedback has said its too hard. I think the enjoyment from the game comes from it being hard and given just a little more time players could git gud and win. It was intentionally hard but I made it a little harder than intended, oops! When I submitted the game I literally had not beaten two of the three levels because I was spending all my time coding and didnt have the time to try to beat the harder levels. After the jam was over however I went back and was able to beat both. I completely agree with you that 48 hours is just not enough time to balance and most of the games here are just too hard or too easy. Its so difficult to get the perfect mix.

Heres the game for context: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461217

According to the comments, we did a hard game. It has been designed to be quite unforgiving (only one life), but still doable. And it seems that we achieved our goal here.

Later on, we added several difficulty levels. Instead of just altering some variables, we wanted to have a different experience for each difficulty level. That's why, on easy mode you have some additional visual elements which helps you to find your way out of the puzzle, whereas on hard and extreme mode, you get far more easily lost. I think that hard and extreme mode make you really feel what we wanted to share in this game.

I think one good rule of thumb when making games for a game jam is if you think the game is hard, then everyone else will probably think it's way too hard.

People won't spend more than a few minutes playing your game. You've been spending 48 hours with it and possibly adjusted the game mechanics to make it feel good for yourself, so naturally you're the best person in the world at your own game.

I usually take a few hours before submission to get the balancing for my games to a reasonable state so that it is not too easy but also not too hard.

I think we managed this very well for your our game. Maybe you want to give it a try. It starts out super easy, at least if you read the tutorial and remember what the right click is doing. And after a few waves it gets really challenging.

I made a game that im currently making a balance patch for post jam because the difficulty is a bit upsetting. 

It is not quite "git good" its more so a mix of that and there is alot of rng as it stands since I made a card game. I have plans too fix it, but to put into perspective how off the balance ended up being while testing I could get to level 7 out of 10 (so I knew it was hard) but from the feed back I got people could only get too level 2 - 3, which is sad since the theme changes at level 4, 7 and 10 but very few people have seen it. 

Part of it was defiantly intentional but I do not think its very easy to learn the little optimizations that make your runs smoother.  TBH I do not think its possible to beat in its current state the last levels have little to no testing...

My brother did actually get too the final level after I showed him a exploit I found while balancing it .-. but thats going to be patch out 

We had the problem where the core mechanics was thoroughly tested and we got increasingly good at it and pushed the difficulty up, then a lot changed when we scrapped the entire level 2 hours before submission, and ended up even harder. But we managed to prove it is beatable with some getting good or a bit of cheesing, so i guess we ended up with a fine difficulty level. We were going for a difficult game anyway :P We wanted to include additional mechanics that would impact the difficulty quite a lot, but I guess it's lucky we didn't have the time for that.

If you want to check it out, we could use an additional rating or two:

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463231

At first I thought my game was gonna be moderately hard... But then... 

I ADDED DIFFICULTY SCALING.

The first 2 levels are pretty easy I would say, but when you get to level 3, It gets pretty hard.

But the last level, it literally requires super human reflexes. I'm not joking.  - I've probably only beaten one stage from that level.

anyway here it is. Tell me what you think: 

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461710

My game has a few puzzles/challenges, and I wasn't sure how hard they were going to be to someone who hadn't designed the game. What I did is make the hard things optional, and at the end of the level asked players to tell me in the comment section how many challenges they completed. When I found out I made it too hard after the rating phase began, I dropped a subtle hint in the game description on how to solve one of the puzzles and after that people started giving more positive comments.

I'm not completely certain I have the right difficulty though. It would be incredibly appreciated if some of you could try it and tell me if I made it too challenging.

I think for games with levels, there will be easier intro levels and it can take a little while to ramp up into something representative of the game itself. Often longer than any game anyone would be able to make in the time limit of a game jam. So you wanna make levels the show off what the game can do/be, but there needs to be at least a somethong to ease players in and let them get the hang of the mechanics. Can be a tricky balancing act.

Difficulty is really tricky to get right, especially in a jam setting.

I think in a jam how OK it is for something to be difficult is usually directly proportional to how essential that difficulty is for communicating the unique twist that your game has... but even then it's hard.

In our game (https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462193) there's some wordplay involved as the game progresses, but we've had people not realize how much choice they actually have in how certain scenes play out. There's a bit of challenge in listening to who is speaking and trying to figure out how they will interpret what you say, and that challenge ramps up as the game progresses.

But because the game looks sort of like a visual novel, I think that people don't always necessarily expect to be able to fail at all, let alone expect to be challenged.

I tried to foreshadow it in the writing with some early characters responding to  you in ways you might not have wanted if you're not paying attention to how they're phrasing their question, but I do wonder how many people don't 'get it', and what I could change in the writing to improve it for people who don't.

Not to mention the general accessibility issues for people who struggle with the English language, etc. Wordplay is pretty brutal in that case.