Aw man, if you want hidden Christian meaning, you go ahead and you read anything by Orson Scott Card (the Alvin the Maker series has a brilliant alternative early Colonist America, whereas the Homecoming series is more of a mmmh scifi-fantasy crossbreed, reminds me of some of Vance scifi). I love his books, but to tell you the truth, I sometimes get slightly sick of the obvious parallels with the Bible. Not that he is preaching, eh, it's just that you can see the influence of the Bible clear as daylight (well, if you know the Bible, that is). You couldn't get more Christian messages through than him. Well, maybe Stephen King. Yeah, definitely Stephen King...
Heck, if you read the Silmarillion (Tolkien), it's hard not to make parallels with the Bible in terms of style and general concept. Start with God and the Angels creating the Earth, and slowly but surely, let the humans take over and fall out God's grace, and so on...
Otherwise, why don't you pick up a good old Bible and read some of the more interesting and, shall we say, action oriented parts? What about the story of Gideon and his 300 braves figthing the hordes of, what were they, Philistines?
Although that's not the best to avoid fighting. What about Samson? After all, he kicked so much as that fighting could easily be avoided and you could concentrate on the more personal parts of the story. Trying to prevent Dalida from betraying you, for a start...

You know, in these forums, jsut like in life, the more you give, the more you receive.

Actually, Orson Scott Card is a Mormon (and yes, he's one of my favorite author's too), so while he references the Bible and Judeo-Christian concepts in many of his works, I'm not sure I would use him as an example of portraying a Christian message. Then again, I'm not completely sure what beliefs Terry Goodkind holds either, who I already recommended, but I think he is a Christian. Anyway, its not all that important. No offense to any Mormons out there. Sorry about my pickiness.

I think that violence should not necessarily be completely sidestepped, as it is a part of life, but it should probably not be the prime focus of the gameplay. This is one of the things I liked so much about Beyond Good and Evil, as it certainly had combat, but combat and killing was not the prime focus of the game. Rather, exploration, stealth, and uncovering the truth were most important. Getting involved in combat when you didn't have to was generally unwise as it was easy to get killed. The gaurds could usually kick your butt (they were trained guards after all), so avoiding them or incapacitating them quickly without a fight was much preferable.

OT conclusion: so, make failed interactions short, and don't have em pause the interaction. Check.

I think that classical point & click adventures ususally don't have fights etc. Maybe, if it was an adventure with some RPG features (as I've mentioned above), there could be some situations, maybe like in Quest For Glory.
But still there can be some 'action moments'. Player can be aware of guards, or
get rid of him in some way.. and maybe there can be some situations when he is killed, but the way you show it to audience is important. There just don't have to be flying heads and fingers ...
Maybe you think that point & click adventures are dead now, but I still believe in them :), they just have to have very good and powerful story and also great atmosphere, combined with some puzzles, non-linearity...

Well, you could have a point and click combat.
I have seen that in a game called Cobra Mission.
It's a hentai game, although to be honest it's not _too_ graphic.
The fighting system was rather original in that you had a gauge filling up. You had to interact with the enemey by simply pointing and clicking onto their picture, using whatever weapons you had at your disposal. When the gauge filled up, WHACK! the enemy would hit you, and the gauge would start again.
The trick was to figure out what weapon was the most effective and which part of the body to aim for. the picture of the enemy was just like an HTML imagemap, except that the hotspots wouldn't be highlighted in anyawy, you had to figure it out. I thought this was rather cool, and would have been a great idea in a point and click adventure game (the game itself was more like a Zelda game, top down view)

hatch22: yeah I know he is mormon, sorry if it makes a difference. For me it's still all Christian, eh? You read his book Lost Boys? I always thought this was a fantastic story :)

Why do you want to make a game for teens that has Christian messages in it?

I mean, probably most of them (at least where I live, anyways) aren't going to really be interested in something if it has religious overtones, or even undertones (despite that, they still read LOTR; in that book, the Christian themes are buried so well they're hard to uncover for us teenagers ;) ). Plus, quite a few of them are likely to be atheist (like me).

So, in other words, if you're going to add Christian messages, don't try to make them messages that try to convert people :P. It probably won't work, unless you bury it really deep and well.

Yeah, don't try to convert people with this game. Your best bet is to valorize the fundamentals of the belief system, so that when they actually encounter Christianity unfiltered, they can relate to the types of struggles and solutions that it offers.

If you can get them to revere Kierkegaard's knight of faith, for instance (Read "Fear and Trembling" for more info), then they'll really relate well to the story of Abraham, and be able to readily understand the teleological suspension of the ethical, a very sophisticated aspect of faith.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage If you can get them to revere Kierkegaard's knight of faith, for instance (Read "Fear and Trembling" for more info), then they'll really relate well to the story of Abraham, and be able to readily understand the teleological suspension of the ethical, a very sophisticated aspect of faith.

Yes, we would like to process something like story of Abraham and Isaac, something that would people make to think more about choices, about all the consequences that can our choices have. And the choices aren't always easy, in fact ususally they're very hard. Situations are complicated and it is not easy to decide. What is more, sometimes the right choice seems to be so bad .. but it's also about how a man can trust God...

Yes, seems to be hard to be a hero in a christian game, but there's lot of stories about heroes with christianity hidden deeply in it.

The bible is packed with stories. If it would be my production I would probably focus on the escape from Egypt because there are so many events along the way you can put into the game.

You might also want to mask the story a bit and add some elements that wasn't there from the beginning to make it more "game worthy".

Good Luck!

Yes, the escape from Egypt is really nice and full of events,... but I am not sure if it is good for adventure game. In fact, I am not sure if it is good to tell such well-known story (I know.. well known among christians). I'm just wondering if it wouldn't be better for some kind of strategy. Maybe whole journey od Israel, all about Joshua, Samuel, David,... it would be even too much for one strategy game :)