OK, I'm working on a game now (shock!) because my attention was bouncing around too much just doing libraries and stuff.

So, the player is trapped in a haunted preschool/daycare. The evil spirit controlling the place wants kids to look after, so it uses magic to make you into a child again.

I'm doing a standard RPG-ish battle system, with a somewhat non-standard levelling. The monsters here are childish nightmares; and by beating them you can grow up again. Your level is your age; you can raise it by claiming XP. But unlike most RPGs, levelling up increases some stats but weakens others, so some monsters are easier to face at a lower level.

And the question: Can anyone suggest some rooms (or even puzzles) that might require you to be a certain age? I'm thinking that there should be some areas of the school that can only be accessed above or below certain ages (harder areas you have to level up to reach; or areas you can't go back to once you've grown up too much).

I've got a few puzzle elements based on the ageing mechanic; such as a string function that randomly jumbles letters, making any printed text you come across harder to read the younger you are. This will make the "sticky note with the password on" puzzle a bit harder. And stairs that are too big for you to climb, so you have to be a certain level to leave the basement. But I'm thinking that the (non-crazy) ghost staff might also remove you from certain areas if you're too old or too young. What places should be restricted to certain ages?

Any suggestions welcome :D

You could have a "Children's Garden", or 'kindergarten'

Hey mrangel

A stair/kitchen gate blocking an exit maybe? The lift and unlock action could be possible from a higher age.

maybe look into the different types of, problems-challenges / learning subjects, for some ideas of puzzles for your game:

(with increasing difficulty for all of them)

1. math problems
2. science (physics, chemistry, biology, etc) problems
3. language problems/challenges
4. physical ability challenges (for example: not tall enough to reach/jump up to a ledge above: inaccessible area until tall/old enough)
5. social skill problems/challenges (puzzles that require team work to solve)
6. history (testing one's historical and/or world knowledge)
7. memory problems/challenges (anyone remember the 'simon says' electronic game where you got to remember the colors, and repeat that pattern, and within a time limit too, lol, ???)
8. etc etc etc

and... you always have an enormous source of resources:

you can always look to actual games (amatuer or professional) for ideas... lol

what types of puzzles have other games (amatuer or professional) done?

this is actually a really bad'ss type of game you thought of mrangel:

if some like 5 year old played this game... he'd only get so far...

but, as he actually grows up in the real world (learning more and/or harder stuff) ... he's able to progress in the game

that's a really cool game design! actually involves the real world of time/aging/growing-up!

Some interesting thoughts.
I'd thought about climbing stairs and reaching a shelf. Opening doors I hadn't considered; thanks :D

Reading/writing I planned for. The function I've written steps over each letter in a string, and has a % chance (based on age and INT stat) of displaying the letter, skipping it, move left, move right, change to a similar letter, or change to a completely different letter.

Other knowledge based problems could be interesting, but still thinking how to use them.

One thing I thought about that would favour younger characters is a wooden climbing frame / fort / treehouse in the yard. There would be some pretty tight spaces there. So if you find monsters there you're at a penalty for each level over a certain point, and if you're too old you just can't fit through the door.

One thing I was thinking about was non-evil ghosts. Maybe some other kids just running through the same little stories again and again; and adults who work there acting like nothing is out of the ordinary. They're just like memories of the people who used to run this place, repeating old routines. So if you do something they don't know how to deal with they kind of disintegrate. Their kindness is keeping the big crazy ghost suppressed; so killing a friendly ghost is super easy, but makes the game harder. (You get an XP penalty, and all the monsters get tougher).

What I'm really stuck on is what age restrictions might be placed on different locations by the friendly ghosts.

I'm thinking that "level" will go up to 255 (though "normal" play is unlikely to require going beyond 100), and roughly correspond to an age in months. You could start anywhere in the range 20-80, depending on your character creation choices. If your age drops too low, then you can't even crawl, so your only choice is to wait for wandering monsters to come to you and hope you can level up again before you get beaten too badly.

(I've also decided that character creation will be a bit odd. You can choose any number of character classes; which includes jobs, genders, races, and agegroups. While picking them, you might get some indication on screen of whether you're playing the game in 'easy' or 'hard' mode, depending if you pick particularly effective combinations)
And after all the time I've put into a partially-complete character creation library… I'm not using it. You start in a "dream room" with all the classes scattered around you as objects. You have to pick at least one gender and one other before you can use the command "wake up", and then all the ones you're carrying have their stats multiplied onto yours.

A bottle with a child-proof cap.

Some people believe kids can see ghosts, so maybe as you get older, less of the friendly ghosts are visible. Kids are not to bothered about hygiene, so possibly could go somewhere disgusting you would not want to when older.

Once you hit puberty, there are all sorts of... distractions and reasons for not wanting to look uncool. Maybe at that point you start to understand references to sex. Maybe you can start to swear. Or guess passwords with swearwords in them.

A bottle with a child-proof cap.

Oh, now that's a nice one :) Thanks

Kids are not to bothered about hygiene, so possibly could go somewhere disgusting you would not want to when older.

That's a neat thought as well. I'm not what kind of disgusting places would crop up, though. I really need more ideas for areas that you can only access before you're too big; though I'd like to have a mix of "staff will remove you" and "you don't fit" restrictions.

also, kids are better at "thinking outside of the box" (creativity) (abstract/indirect/obtuse thinking) (as their brains "wiring" isn't connected or set-up yet), whereas we lose much of this as adults, as our brains get wired/set/focused/connected (procedural/direct/acute) from our experiences/tasks in life.