I like the brother/sister 7+ idea and I think my kids will be happy to test the game as soon as possible.

I don't know if it was already mentioned, but we need to create localized versions of the game. Most 7 year old kids cannot follow a story in a foreign language.
HUD/Menu/Panels/Help - should be planned to be localizable (available in different languages).

Do you agree with me?

I was thinking about the brother/sister concept and was reminded of the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill. I then looked it up on Wikipediea. Here is the link: Jack and Jill I'm thinking that many parents know of this rhyme and tell it to their kids, so maybe if they see the video game with a short description of the story, they might buy it for them. If the game does not have too much violence and focuses on puzzle solving, we might be able to pitch the game as semi educational: the kids will get to know the story, and remember the moral while also learning how to problem solve. If we are okay with this idea, maybe the kids names can be Jack and Jill. Nowhere in the nursery rhyme does it mention a father, however, there is a mother. As suggested in one version of the rhyme, the mother punishes Jill for causing the disaster(Jacks fall). Here's a quick story, Jack and Jill go up the hill to fill a pail of water from the villages only well. They fight over it causing the water to spill and Jacks crown falling in the well. The water can be symbolic of life and the crown of power. After losing both the water and crown, the village is in trouble. Now both Jack and Jill must enter the dried up well to retrieve both. The well however is dry, so the two must work together, going into the depths of the world beneath the well to find the water and crown they so desparately need to survive. I could continue, but this post is becoming lengthy and I thought maybe others would like to fill in the blanks...

Ah I wan tto insert one important thing.

This game should be suitable for children as well as for older people. So we will need selectable difficulty levels for sure.

To make it challenging htere should be puzzles where you need to think for quite a while to keep people motivated, but this might be too complex for little children.

This makes designing the levels a lot more difficult.

Opinions?

Is this game supposed to be SUITABLE for ages 7+ (concerning visuals, story) or is it supposed to be PLAYABLE for aged 7+ (concerning puzzles, difficulty)?

I have searched the net looking for the best brother / sister game that comes close enough to what we have discussed here. Here's the link:

The Forest Temple

Try to play through the first few levels to see how it goes. Our game will have a 3D world, but it can use sprites for the characters as well.
Firo, I think that the levels don't need to be extremely complicated; the puzzle / arcade combination should provide the fun.

Maybe there can be different exit doors in each level. They can be color coded so that players can choose their level of difficulty. In the first level, there can be a short tutorial similar to George's sign in his demo.

The different exit doors is an interesting idea.

Ok, to get this further...

Boy
- special ability: gravity switch

I thought about what was written here and tried to think about level design. Soon I noticed it is pretty difficult to design levels allowing complex gravity changes without making it possible to finish the level in an unwanted way.
Also I had the feeling the overwhelming options to the player might appear distracting.

So I fleshed out following, pretty simple idea:

- Boy can switch gravity by using double jump. For now I don't see a necessary limitation necessary to it directly(*).
- Only up/down can be switched
- There are boxes, enemies and stuff with an outstanding visual appearance to signalize they will react on a gravity switch.
- Other objects won't react on the gravity switch
- to make this less confusing, the camera view should also turn upside down. So you always walk around with feet on the ground. (Without having falling boxes it might work without turning the view, but I guess it looks alien when the view orientation stays the same and suddenly boxes fall to the top of the screen)

(*) Instead of limiting the gravity feature by time limit, allow special levels where the gravtiy feature has to be switched on by disabling some security stuff in the level.



Girl:
- special ability: time warp

Still to be defined: What has to be done to perform a time warp. I'm not sure if a simple button pres will work here.
e.g. Sonic CD did time travels by having Future/Past/Present signs you had to touch. Afterwards you needed to make Sonic faster and faster until he warped.

Input needed here.




This s nothing final, this is just what I collected together and thought makes sense. Feel free to take it apart if you dislike the strict regulation

Right now the programmers' team has started to work at the player code. We'll have two players and only one of them will be able to switch the gravity by double jumping. I agree that we shouldn't make the things too complex; 180 degrees gravity switching should be enough, at least for now. At this point I think that only the player should react to the gravity switch; we'll probably add light and heavy boxes that fall down to the floor / raise up in the air when they aren't blocked by other obstacles.

We are trying to come up with a quick prototype and see how fun that is to play, and then we'll decide on the following steps. We'll probably post the link to it here and see what you guys think about it.

George please let me know when you need one of the following:
- Inventory
- State manager
- Key assignment

I have scripts ready for that. They need some more tweaking but the basics work and might be useful for your game.

In this case I'll join the team in march if still someone is needed.
If not, that's okay too.

Thank you for the generous offer, Firo. I'll contact the lead programmer and see what he says.