There were several key lessons I took to heart from past jams, but some lessons also during the jam itself:

1. Emotional impact is my highest priority. After all a game should be fun, or if I'm doing a story game then emotional impact would be my number one priority, not so much technical execution 

2. I should try writing a story from most essential to plotline first. I'm too scatterbrained a person to be writing from start to finish, I wrote this game from finish, to start, to middle, then added smaller details

3. Battles should be easy, but long enough so the player has to react to enemy AI. I should expect players to be using ineffective techniques as there will be a learning curve. If players guess wrong, there should be room for forgiveness for bad luck or bad plays

4. For this jam, I should minimize production time for code and graphics in order to prioritize story content! I've done many jams where I did graphics, I felt it was time to work on my writing skills instead!

Overall this design philosophy I rolled with resulted in me producing story content more than double the suggested play time a whopping 11 days before the deadline!

Any new lessons to be learned will be more clear when the jam comes to a close and I get feedback from people other than my sister