Yeah sure! I'll post a couple wallpapers soon, just for fun. BUT I was actually thinking of giving out rewards to the player upon gaining achievements, like wallpapers, icons, avatars, etc. So you'll have to work to get them! 

Cool title screen. I would tone down the green though, put more emphasis on the background on the other side of the window, which is what's of interest to the player and puts the player in the shoes of the character a bit more.

It's really hard for me to contain myself and not post all the levels I'm creating on this board, but I have to! I don't want to ruin the fun and the surprise, so I'll post a bit less


Still, here are some characters in the game.

[Psycho Beat Runner]

I'll post it right here, coz I like sharing! I'll try to find the sketches I had made for it to make this post fit with the thread...

Also, I misread you at first. The idea was to make a Contra or Guardian Heroes-like platform shoot-em-up. A full-on Rhythm Shmup would be awesome. I'll try your game tonight at home.



Psycho Beat Runner (or something)
Rhythm platformer shooter

Main Concept
I haven’t selected a setting for this game yet. Maybe I would go with a totally abstract theme, like a character going on the flow of the music. Or  go into different people’s minds à la Psychonauts.

Genre Specification
A platformer game with guns, but the player must follow the rhythm of the music to defeat enemies (The hero fires instantaneous shots, not slow bullets).

Gameplay Highlights
-Enemies display their weaknesses on precise beats. The player can only damage and destroy enemies by blasting them at that moment. The right moment to hit could be displayed à la Elite beat agents.
-As enemies get tougher, they require sequences of beats to be destroyed. A player must hit them in a precise sequence without failing once, or must start over. Some harder monsters could only be defeated when the music plays a particular drum roll or guitar riff, like a boss exposing its red spot only once in a while.
-Bosses would fight with a special tune and have different attacks and sequence weaknesses depending on how the beat goes.
-Enemies would fire bullets and beams to the beat of the music, making the player move around as he shoots.
-A score multiplier rises up at every successful kill, while a miss lowers it back to x1. The Guitar Hero and Rock Band score mechanics and power-ups could work well in this game.

Tech highlights
-Perfect synchronization between the gameplay and the music. The game must know what beat is playing, so that enemies can follow their pattern to the perfection.
-Maybe the music would actually be created by the monsters on screen. For example, two cymbals monsters come in (sequence of 3 hits to kill), one guitar riff monster (rare weaknesses, easy to kill), one quick beat (5 hits to kill!), as their sounds are added to the background track, the players shoots (with some definite sound) and participates in the music!
-Lots of things happening at once on the same screen
-Particles would work awesomely with the crowded, intense action.

Art and Audio Highlights
Music and sound design must be in perfect harmony with the programmation.
-Visual feedbacks to the beat and monster weaknesses
-Lots of special effects to accentuate score multipliers.
-Level design should be relatively linear and easy, with more focus on the monsters and their patterns.
-Crazy boss designs

Notes
A lot of good ideas could come out of Rhythm Heaven mostly, but also Dance Dance Revolution and Rock Band.

I'll participate in this competition as a provider of art assets. Expect some really basic stuff like buttons, icons and panels.

Can I provide assets from my game, if I don't mind them being used somewhere else?

Hey, is that an idea for a for some sort of shoot-em-up where the enemies change state in time with the rhythm of the music, and you have to shoot them in time with the beat? That is a very cool idea.

Yes! I have a game treatment for it if you're interested. It's got some flaws I haven't fixed yet though.

My two cents:

I'd compare platformers to Manga books in Asia. Most Manga books have a very similar look and feel (big eyes, page composition, even story structure in some cases), which is creating an automatic sense of familiarity for the reader. The author simply add more or less twists, a different setting, special characters, on top of a familiar formula, to tell the story they want to tell. Some authors go farther than others, changing the style or how the story is told graphically or the atmosphere, etc. but the root of almost every manga is the same formula.

Platformers are the equivalent for gaming. Most everyone has played and enjoyed Super Mario Bros in their youth (it might be becoming less and less true with new generations, but whatever). A lot of people have played other platformers like Sonic or Contra for example. So if you have someone try the platformer you created, there's a good chance they will already be familiar with the controls, running and jumping, holes, jumping on enemies or shooting them. You just have to add the twist, setting, character, story, and/or style that you want (which can be just a reskin of Mario or a ton of new mechanics and gameplay elements).

So yeah, platformers are the most familiar games therefore the most popular among indie developers.

/End two cents.

So there's no consequence to a ball hitting a house that's already crumbled down? I feel the chief thing is a little complicated. Also, the game becomes really easy when there's only one hut left...

The animations are sweet, controls and ball movement are spot-on.
I love how the enemies die, too.  :D

This is from a game project called Food Noob, which I have hidden somewhere. I'll get to that game at some point, when I'm comfortable with scripting and/or using Flixel.

But for now, some sketches:





This is for Anything Beats Everything, where I don't even understand myself:


And this is probably from very late at night trying to figure out how to do a rhythm game:


Going through my sketchbook I found something that just gave me an idea for an awesome thread...

Everything works really well, good job

I'll test it!

Can't wait to see more.





...


Walrus Monk?!

Ooooh if I had a phone I'd buy it and spend all my time playing it.

Really great game, just played through the demo. Really cool use of the simple mechanic.

To answer the sub-question there... Depends how subtle the game design is. Some games I analyze without wanting to do so, and it prevents me from enjoying playing them. Take Silent Hill 2 for example; the exploration/scare/combat patterns are really getting to my nerves after a while. Same for lots of 3D platformers, where game design purposefully slows you down to extend the game's duration.
Anyway.

Wow, thanks! Those past two comments were extremely helpful. So, I figured out a way to make talking a lot more exciting... using Paul's advice, I make it with 'points', and clear celebrations of your goals. So, making the person you're talking to angry lowers your 'points' with them, and makes it harder for you to get them to help you. Talking with them in a nice way, or helping them out with their mission, raises the points. When the meter reaches max, it has a nice little '____ is now saving the world!' or something screen, to show clearly that you succeeded, and also to give you a sense of accomplishment.

I was gonna say pretty much what you discovered yourself

I've never seen a game with interesting dialogue and no gameplay be of any interest to me, but as soon as it becomes rewarding to talk to characters and befriend them, I like it. One good game that is inspiring in that sense is Final Fantasy Chocobo Tales on the DS. It's mostly a collection of mini-games with a card game added onto it, which doesn't really fit your game idea. BUT, as you complete chapters and get good scores in mini-games, more Chocobo friends appear everywhere in the world. When you talk to them they like you and thank you, as you're responsible for their return to the world. It becomes more and more fun to walk around as lots of characters seem to like you, rewarding you with a smile.  I believe Rocket Slime had sort of the same mechanic.

Anyway, I can't wait to see that game being made, so get to it 

[discovery]

I don't know about all kids, but this 3-y-old sure doesn't like hard games.
http://supermeatboy.blogspot.com/2009/10/3-year-old-vs-super-meat-boy.html

I remember getting through Zelda II, Battletoads, TMNT and other hard games when I was young. I have no idea why I kept trying.


As for the imagination question (the first kind), I would say that for young kids imagination is mostly active alongside discovery . Scribblenauts let kids discover what happens when he writes a word.
I have a friend who has worked on many kids games, and he keeps saying kids love surprises, discovering fun stuff. If there's a box in the background and the kid can click on it, making a clown pop-up, they love it. If you can press on a fat man's belly and make him fart, they love it. Anyway, I'm babbling here.

I'd love to play a procedurally-generated top-down sandbox zombie survival tactics game (PGTDSZSTG). With RPG elements obviously. 

I tried making it but it was too much work.

I believe boss fights to be the ultimate challenge of the skills and reflexes the player develops throughout the game. It is quite difficult to mix that mentality with storytelling, but some games manage to do it well. Portal's boss fight merged the two very well, culminating story and tossing the player in a stressful situation that requires quick thinking (destroying the AI parts as fast as possible) and agility (catching those parts in high places).

In Megaman games, the last stage (including the final boss) play that role to perfection. Levels are harder than most normal levels and the boss has multiple patterns and weaknesses. Same for Castlevania games.
I usually hate those because they're too hard most of the time, but still, they fit my definition of a well-designed final boss.

Although it was sort of flawed and that I couldn't really care for the rest of the ending, Metal Gear Solid 4's hand-to-hand boss fight was far from what I just described, BUT was still a great culmination to the emotional gradation in the game. So I guess my definition is kinda loose, since I enjoyed that final boss. I wouldn't recommend using a whole new mechanic for the last boss in any other game though.

Also:
Fallout 3's boss fight per se was really bad, but the ride to the end alongside that giant robot had one good thing going for it: I knew it was the end, so I started using all the good ammo I had gathered and saved throughout the game (mini-nukes, rockets, etc.). All the destruction did feel a bit epic.

And....Spelunky's boss fight was pretty cool.