So, like others have mentioned, the obvious way to go with this theme is "blood magic" type things where you pay for upgrades with hit points, whether it's a fantasy setting with necromancy, a cyberpunk dystopia, or just a generic game mechanic with no in-universe explanation. But there's a few thousand of us here, so let's see if we can't come up with some other directions to take this.

With a theme this specific, the biggest question to me isn't "how can we as developers interpret the theme," it's "how will the voters interpret the theme." No one wants to get docked points because someone felt they stretched the theme too far, and I worry that worry will stifle creativity. So, in this post, I'll try to stay as close to the original theme statement as possible and explore alternate meanings of the words in the statement rather than ideas that are simply similar to the theme. Honestly, I may end up stretching the theme quite a bit myself, but close adherence is worth a shot at least.

Let's look at each word individually:

• "Your": Sadly not much to work with here, but we'll try. The naive interpretation is that "you" refers to the player character or characters. But what if "you" isn't the player? What if the statement is something the player says or thinks about another? A hitman, for example, might view someone else's life as representing currency in his/her pocket.

• "Life": This could have a few different meanings. The most obvious is, of course, the state of being alive and not being dead. In the context of our games, this might mean avoiding a game over or even Curse of the Black Pearl-style necromancy where dead means being a zombie/skeleton/etc (which, coincidentally, also involves currency!). But, "life" can also mean things like your job/livelihood/how you spend your time or even what you care about. So maybe it's not your physical health but rather your time or goal.

• "Is": Bill Clinton jokes aside, there's a lot of room for creativity here. First off, the word "is" is reflexive; that is to say, it goes both directions. So the theme could also be interpreted as "Currency is Your Life." "Is" can also be metaphorical, not just literal.

• "Currency": Not too much can be done with this word by itself; currency in games is usually things like spending money or XP on items and upgrades. But there's no limits whatsoever on what to spend the currency on!

Hope this helps anyone still in the brainstorming stage! This is also how I've been doing my own brainstorming, so I figured I might as well write it up and publish it, you know?

EDIT: I'm not doing any twitch streaming, but I will be live tweeting this weekend at @zata_gamedev!