As a retired teacher who has taken an interest in the toolset over the last couple of years and used it with a class of Games Design pupils it occurred to me that there are very few modules aimed at younger children on the Vault. There is a project page created by @OlivierLeroux which outlines most of the existing kids' modules but I thought it might be nice to give them a bit more exposure and try to encourage builders to think about catering for a younger age group. As a grandfather myself, I know that my granddaughter is interested in good stories and playing games on the computer and I am currently trying to interest her in building simple things using the toolset. I'm sure many of us on the Vault are of a similar age and hope they might be interested in catering for a younger audience occasionally.
Before continuing, in the interests of full disclosure, one of the modules on Olivier's page is one that I created for my granddaughter called "Ruby and the Last Unicorn". It will be included here but at least you are aware of my connection to it.
The first question that springs to mind is probably what exactly constitutes a kids' module? Well, while reluctant to set down any ground rules, to me it would be one with a good but simple storyline, fun characters, a modern colourful look and not too long but I'm probably more sure about what it shouldn't have - heavy graphic violence, adult themes, bad language or explicit deaths ! It should be fun with probably a happy ending to avoid sending young ones away with nightmares... I would start by setting the game's violence level by choosing Options on the main menu then game options then Game/General/Advanced and set violence to Low. Not entirely all that this does but it does remove blood from the equation and it's a start. I've shied away from giving suitable age levels as that's problematic but you may well get an indication from the individual project page of the author's thoughts on the matter.
Another issue is that of spoilers. I don't intend to give any endings away (I don't have time to play them all through anyway) but I'm assuming that anyone reading this is probably going to be playing it with a younger person so I'm aiming this at pointing out any issues there could be with what you do or do not want youngsters to see in a module. You may have your own views on this and that's fine.
This and other pages are really a fleshing out, with his consent, of what is on Olivier's page at the moment on the Vault where various kid friendly modules are listed. Longer term we plan a new project page with more detail.
I've tried to play at least the opening to the modules and provide a little comment plus some screenshots. I hope to eventually cover all the modules listed there and ask the community if there are any others they think might qualify. Any comments are weighted to the positive as it's not my intention to upset anyone or discourage anyone from having a go at this genre. I played them on EE so can't vouch for anything else. you may well have to change the format of any movies included in the modules.
A link to a module's project page on the Vault is given at the bottom of each review.
(Jimdad55)