If you’re participating in the LD27 theme slaughter, you may be confused on when to choose slaughter or what a theme really is.  Here’s a pretty simple rule that you can use to make sense of it all.

If you could say the sentence “a major theme of this game is <instert theme suggestion>” and that sentence makes sense to you, then it’s a theme.  If not, send it straight to theme hell.

For example, you could say “a major theme of Super Metroid is solitude”.  Therefore, solitude might be a valid theme.  On the other hand, you wouldn’t say “a major theme of Super Metroid is space ship”.  That doesn’t make sense because “space ship” is not a theme. Themes are usually conceptual/abstract and rarely places or things.

Hope this helps… Happy hunting!