I managed to get the basic framework up and running last night, what might be called the skeleton of the engine.. basically, a background screen and a menu. But I've not got anything to get excited about yet.

My wife's going to check with her Uni to see if they've got bluescreen capability. I hope they've got something I can use, I'd hate to have to manually alter each frame of animation to set the background colour.

We're also going to need at least 2 80cm x 80cm x 80cm cubes, also in blue. These will be the blocks she has to climb on.

I'm guessing at a push I could use something else.

Then there's the issue about how to control the Tetris block. In my design, I've said the player will fire/throw projectiles at the crane and blocks.. that might prove a little difficult for a child to do. So I may simplify the controls a bit.

Perhaps Space calls the crane to the current X-position and Enter rotates the block, backspace makes it fall. That would give an incentive to run around the tetris arena.

That would remove the need to fire or throw things, the player could just focus on running and jumping.

I'm really impressed with the speed that other contestants are getting their games up and running. This is the first week and we've already got some good stuff coming out. I'm really excited about this years competition.