Good idea about old people - they should tell stories, imparting wisdom to children etc.

They should also 'complain about the mess' or something like that.

Ha, they could tell the SAME STORIES OVER AND OVER! Just like real-life old people. Or develop Alzheimer's and forget all their skills.

Another idea is that when there is a famine, children could be pressed into service at an age younger than 14

Just a question really, say the windows version comes out, or even for palm version, can more behaviors and other improvements to the game be put into the game in the form of an upgrade to 1.2 or something, or is that not possible. I dont know anything about game programming.

A few more puzzles wouldnt be a bad idea, like an expansion pack on a different island or a continuation of this one, i know this isnt Settlers or anything but it seems the smaller games are the more addicting ones and its a shame when you finally beat it, that its over. I know i hate that.

Just some thought i will post a bunch of things later when im not working!! lol.

Thanks

I think it would be fun to hear the girl giggle when in the breeding hut. It would add something while waiting to see it you added a new villager.

OK, here's one:
How about letting more than one villager acquire skill points from an event?
Specifically, when two villagers go off to the honeymoon hut, shouldn't BOTH of them get Breeding boosts?

This would also allow the "Teaching" event to be something useful. For instance, when a Master builder, farmer, or researcher is working with another villager of a lower level, the lesser experienced villager gets a skill boost. (Possibly with a decreased productivity for the master, or transferring the boost that the master would have received to a co-worker.)

While we're at it, shouldn't the nursing mothers get a parenting/breeding skill boost for all the time that they spend caring for the little spuds?

Just my $0.02

Hmm... This one I'm kind of hesitant to bring up...

Infant Mortality.

It's a major issue in primitive cultures. For a culture at the VS level, we could expect an infant mortality rate of between 25 and 50%. Diseases, accidents, wild animals, drownings, you name it. Even an idyllic island life can be hard. If we're really going to simulate a village, a portion of the babies born need to die. It's an accepted fact of life in primitive cultures.
Having high Science, Medical, and Fertility tech levels should help the rate, as should having lots of well-trained doctors available. The Breeding skill of both parents should also effect a child's chances of survival.
But the mortality rate probably shouldn't go below about 5%.

Hang on, let me put on my asbestos underwear. OK. Flame away.

-=P. T. Murphy.

I have just finished playing Village Sim and enjoyed it and have some thoughts if you are making a new version of this game.

First, it would be great if the people could more than two icons as they age (instead of just child and adult). This does not need to be fancy. Changing thier hair to white or grey when they become elderly, and have the men that have beards or sideburns to have a clean shaven face version for ages 14-18 would help a lot. This would help them seem more human and less like icons, and would really help keep track of who is young and old when you have 65 villagers running around often with a 72 year old looking identical to a 15 year old.

Second, the island events could have more drama (IE one could influence another). Here is one example; with the event of the the monkey that steels the food. What if there was a monkey mood scale that the player could not see, instead of the monkey just leading you to a horde of his hidden food. Whenever this event comes up you are given the option of feeding him or chasing him. If you feed him the monkey mood index goes up and your food goes down. If you chase him the monkey mood index goes down but not only do you not loose food you may find some of his. So then next time this event came up, the event would change based on the monkey mood index and what you did last time, if you fed him last time perhaps he brings a friend and now you have to feed or chase two monkeys (and then next time three if you feed two) so that you are having to feed the monkeys and not just your villagers. But then perhaps having happy monkeys can also help you. Maybe there is an island event of a huge King Kong like ape that carries off one of your young woman villagers, but if you have been feeding the monkeys and they are happy with you they come protect your villagers and tell King Kong to go away. Or perhaps the monkeys bring you a present of a rain stick that can be used three times to make more berries. The island events would still happen randomly, but one could influence another.

My third suggestion, may be too big a change to the game... but there is no reason the game has to end. If the puzzles did good and bad things and you had to choose what to do instead of having a puzzle check off page, and tech levels did not guarentee you enough food and shelter as the winds of fate came and went.

(For example an island event of a hurricane wipes out a random 1-3 huts but washes possibly useful stuff on shore (the bottles of other island events?), though the beach needs to be recleaned)

(Or example two: you have to choose to rebuild the ruins OR carve the icon, if choose to rebuild the stonehenge your villagers pray to the sun god, your crops do really well, and grow fast but he is a hot barren god and fertility goes way down and it becomes hard to get next generations, if instead you carve the icon then your villagers pray to the fertility god, and have lots of children, but the crops are no good and it becomes hard to feed them, they have to fish and hope for rain for the berry bush. Carve the icon and stonehenge will fall back to ruin. Rebuild stonehenge and the icon goes back to being a stone).

If you dig up the treasure, a new behavior of buying and selling happens, the villagers work harder (they do thier tasks more and do less swimming etc...) but argue about money more. Unless you re-hide the gold.

If you make the garden grow the villagers that spend time in it stay healthier but lazyer. And you have to keep watering it or it will die again.

A few things like this and the game could stay in flux forever.

Thanks for a fun game.

How about villager going on camping trip

erm... what do ya mean?