Hear hear! It’s only because of the four-hour deadline that I managed to write a game at all. I think I could have done with thirty more minutes (if nothing else I could well and truly empty my bug list before release) but there’s no way I would release anything in time without some sort of limit.
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I would have liked to add some spooky music, and work a bit more on the synonyms for the puzzle solutions - I had just enough time to throw in all the ones my testers tried, but it’d be nice to give that aspect a bit more depth.
But yes, I agree that the four-hour limit is a blessing in many ways - I’ve been starting games and tailing off for months, and it was great just to get something finished and released.
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I assumed that the time the playtesters spent testing the game wouldn’t count, but any time you spent fixing/tweaking it would, since that constitutes (re)writing code that goes into the game. But the rules don’t really mention it one way or the other, so I’m just guessing.
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A ton more play testing. I love my family, but I fear they don’t tell me what’s wrong with something out of concern for my feelings lol
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I saw in a thread somewhere (I don’t remember where) that testing time and time creating cover art doesn’t count.
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Um, so I actually didn’t need extra time because I finished the ChoiceScript portion in a little over 2 hours. But I did a lot of scoping prep beforehand. This is also my fourth ECTOCOMP, so I’ve had practice. I completed two in ADRIFT 4 and missed the deadline on my third entry, written in Twine (I think like 1.42? Who knows). We used to do it in three hours and beta-testing counted (I’m glad to hear it actually doesn’t now, the more open it is to submissions and authors, the better, that’s the spirit).
Part of my preparatory process used to be writing a whole plan out by hand, then hitting a timer and typing it up to give me an idea if I was in scope or not. I think I did that for my second project. This year I didn’t quite do it like that, but I already had the manual in hand and just had to type up stuff from it with multiple choice selections which was simple to do with ChoiceScript. I did spend almost half an hour hunting down a couple bugs though (some tabs snuck in from the manual when CS only wants spaces, I used a # instead of a * at some point, etc.). I also had originally wanted a few tracked variables to change some responses in the answer section based on the player’s selected answers, but decided that any much beyond bare bones was just feature creep, so I did cut some of that too. Hmm… I guess in a roundabout way, that would be what I would’ve added if I’d had more time. But I don’t think it overall would’ve added too much to the exam itself.
Oh, I also didn’t even think of cover art at the time. Looks like a lot of other entries have sweet art. Maybe I could’ve doodled something up for it. Maybe I still shall if I find myself inspired!
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I was aiming for a petite mort. Mine came out to 4 hours and 30 minutes instead of 4 hours. I made the extra sacrifice of writing more to tell the story how I wanted. And, truly, what cost me the extra 30 minutes past the mark was not planning the endings correctly. So, in a way, that’s what I did with my extra time, even if I didn’t create a petite mort in the end. 
I also didn’t write a saving mechanic, since I was working off the backbone of a code I had written for a game half its length. “Oh, there won’t be many choices, we don’t need to save!” and then I realized I wanted three endings. And then I skipped through in playtesting to test the endings and choices, realizing how annoying it was to do so.
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I would’ve liked to have several different endings but I had to compromise and just have one with a minimal variance of how it happens.
Alternatively, more time to flesh out the story and be able to build tension for a bit longer. I feel like the game might be too short and I worry the ending is probably feels rushed…