We have a 6 year old girl in the household and I was thinking recently that byond might be a good tool for making children's games. I searched all games for preschool, kids, child, and children but didn't see anything that she would be able to handle. She might be able to play some of the casual games, though.
Then I was thinking there are probably a lot of people in the byond community that have youngsters in the household. Maybe it would be worthwhile to talk about this genre.
What should and shouldn't be in a kid game? Here are some ideas to start off:
- Single player only: because parents don't want their kids talking to strangers.
- Suggested age range: should be shown on the site before the game is downloaded.
- Brainlessly intuitive: you can't expect these users to peruse a manual of keyboard shortcuts or consult a strategy guide.
- Positive themes: cute fuzzy happy stuff.
- Helpful audio: for preschoolers the alerts will need to be spoken to them (in a friendly voice), but early schoolers can have textual info if the vocabulary is appropriate. Our 6 year old can only read some simple words.
- Glitzy icons: stuff that sparkles, shines, and glints.
- Educational: parents like exposing kids to games that interactively teach them stuff like letters, numbers, etc.
- Familiar music: Barney's success isn't from creative songs but from familiar songs with a creative flair added.
I think for this genre, game design and coding would be quick and easy. More time would be spent on audio/visual content.
You probably guessed most of my experience with kids is more girl-centric (my girlfriend and I each have 2 daughters). What variations work well with boys?
Do you (dis)agree with the above points? Do you know of other things to consider for this target audience?
Gameplay ideas (not really original)
- popping bubbles
- catching falling fruit/shapes/etc
- navigating a maze
- dressing paperdolls
- finding differences between 2 images
- where's waldo type stuff
- sorting numbers and letters
- connecting dots in numeric or alpha sequence
- selecting pictures to build a silly story
- copying numbers, letters, or musical notes
What other gameplay options would work?
Now... discuss!
ID:152081
 Mar 13 2008, 10:20 am
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Although I can't argue that in some aspects BYOND would be a great tool for building this kind of stuff, I'm not sure that its the best tool you could be using.
First of all, BYOND is designed for multi-player gaming, and because of that it has certain limitations that engines designed for single-player games don't have. I remember using Klik & Play when I was much, much younger and before I had internet access. And even though that program's about 14 years old, while running on my antique computer it could outperform BYOND running on today's computers. So lets face it - BYOND is slow. Its slow because its designed with multi-player in mind. If you're not taking advantage of that, BYOND isn't the best engine for you. Second, its grid-based nature makes it ideal for things like strategy games or RPGs. Its much easier to make simple games on an engine like Klik & Play that doesn't have all the graphical restrictions. BYOND is less cute-and-fuzzy and more rigid-and-blocky. Third, there are very few people in this community who even bother playing Casual games, so there's a slim chance that anyone here would be searching for casual games designed for six-year-olds. This community is cursed with hordes of 12-18 year olds who are only interested in killing and being powerful, so you won't find much support for children's games here. Nothing says you couldn't do it though! I mean, look at that guy who made the program for learning Japanese! | |
One thing you might consider is that old two button game challenge that Leftley made:
http://www.byond.com/members/ Leftley?command=view_post&post=26129 I have fond memories as a kid of two-button handheld electronic games, like Pro-Action Baseball, where you had to move your batter properly to hit balls by tapping the big Left arrow or the big Right arrow and having your batter be in the proper position to hit the ball before it passes over the critical area. (Of course, you had to hit the ball even if it was way off in non-strike territory.) I tried to find a picture of the game to no avail. [edit] Found it! http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Tandy/ProActBB.htm | |
While it wouldn't appeal to the obvious BYOND community, it's nonetheless a great idea. Someone made a point-n-click paint game for their son (I forgot who) and I thought it was pretty clever. I think you, and anyone else interested should go for it. I'd rather see BYOND expand then stay strict, only geared toward specific games.
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Those are some good points and I can't disagree at all. I checked out klik and play and they don't support it, but the klik team has some more advanced tools out now that run on modest computers.
The main focus of byond's "dream makers" is developing multiplayer games that we enjoy playing ourselves. The thing that draws me towards trying a kid game is: - as a break from bigger projects - having a kid around who would dig something homemade And the reason I would do it with byond: - as an exercise in making user-friendly interfaces with byond - leveraging familiarity with byond dev to toss together something quick and easy And yeah, I wouldn't expect a kid game to win a popularity contest from this older community, but if one builds something why not put it out there. | |
That's a cool idea. I would like to see that app. There's a free paint program good for kids called tux paint (not byond). She enjoys it except that the interface was a bit challenging for her so she needed a lot of help at first.
I remember the old deluxe paint app for the Amiga. Kids liked playing with the kaleidoscope brush. | |
Sports is a good theme, since kids become familiar with various ones at an early age, especially baseball, soccer, and basketball. Other stuff like "tag" would be easy to do with byond's built in movement procs and a simple AI.
Thinking of tag, I just realized is something. Even though parents don't want their kids playing with strangers on the internet, that doesn't mean multiplayer games should be completely avoided. There's still the possibility of turn-based "candyland" type games played with a parent or sibling on the same computer. Also realtime kid games could be played on 2 computers in the same household. | |
A platformer with happy colors
where the entire point of the game is to help the character find a missing toy