I can't deny that the way I see it fitting is a bit of a reach, but... The player NPCs have small different "personality quirks" in terms of how they react to actions/events. So while you control where they go, there's still things they will do that will help you or stuff that you'll have to work around, thus the "collaborating" part. They aren't abundant, but given there's a limit to what one can do in a jam after all, I had to cut some stuff I hoped I would've been able to add.
I generally have trouble coming up with very fitting games for jam themes, so no hard feelings