I agree with Sawyer's answers for all of the above!
6- Yes! Just don't expect great "Gameplay" scores. Sounds like a good way to focus on story/graphics!
7. Wow! This is really pushing the limits of a "game" jam. I'd say as long as there is something controllable, it can count as a game, though a video file you hit "new game" to watch is probably the absolute bare minimum possible.
OK, thanks! One more thing:
8. About "the player must go there" and how Sawyer said the "all players must see the ascent in some form" part, does it mean that the characters who set foot on the ascent doesn't have to be characters that the player can control? (e.g., a flashback cut scene for a village's situation 5,000 years ago and way before any of the characters ever existed, or even the boss and villains setting foot on the ascent). Or even: maybe the ascent doesn't have any characters of NPCs on there, but somehow the player gets a "view" of it without being there (e.g., a character falls asleep and dreams of a mysterious ascent-like place that he knows nothing about, and nobody is in the dream; not even himself... the entire dream "goes up" the ascent even though nobody is there.)
It can be kind of ambiguous what the "player" is in these, but I can stress that the location has to be a physical location, so it can't be a dream or a memory. However, if the "player" in the form of the 3rd person viewer of events goes back in time to an ascent, but none of the protagonists or antagonists are there or even existed, that could still count as fulfilling the requirement.
Oh wow, this is interesting because I thought if someone dreams of a physical location, that would count as a physical location (including if the physical location is an illusion created by the mind; like the player will only see physical land, but in reality it has been nothingness all along, but the player will not know that until later in the end). I guess if someone astral travels to the "spirit realm" above the physical ascent (e.g. think Rave Heart), but doesn't actually set foot on there, then maybe it can still work?
Hopefully these questions I asked will help some people get some ideas as well, including those who didn't think they could "make it in time" with a "proper" jam entry because they just discovered it (like me)!
