It's alive!

Okay, so the game itself hasn't come alive, not even as a prototype...yet. I'm still getting to grips with Gamemaker and its drag/drop and coding GML.

BUT
The concept is alive!! 

Cheese and Quackers follows the tale of Quackers, a young duckling separated from its siblings by a freak gust of wind. Cheese is a friendly field mouse, shy around the other ducklings but able to talk to Quackers. 

I have a map which consists of three areas: Woodland, City and Park, but you must cross the woods to get to the city and cross the busy city road to get to the park.

So far I've managed to come up with the three areas' tasks to actually get to the puzzles, but coming up with the puzzles (keeping in mind the player is a duckling and therefore unable to fetch and carry) for the levels is the hard part. Each puzzle completion 'finds' a sibling, who follows you through the world map to get to the next level. 

Thinking about the woodlands, I've decided on a top-down adventure level to get to the puzzle at the end, but the player has to avoid predatory foxes on the paths to get to the puzzle safely. 

Lives are an issue, ideally I'd like to give the player three lives but that doesn't seem right; perhaps every time you 'find' a sibling you earn a life so you don't have to start the whole game over again, you just have to start that area's challenge again,..

Big things being planned.

And I have to pitch this tomorrow.

Christ.