First Entry - Research

My first idea was to have a small town - this is the characters' Tiny World.
In this town the player could be a character walking around the small town, helping out the locals or drive around in a car or perhaps be able to do both.  I didn't want it to be violent like a GTA2 type game, but I did want it to have simple missions and the ability to drive around the town and the driving to be fun.

Given the time available, I can't do both  (person walking and driving), so I've chosen to have the player be the car and drive around. I was thinking a simple taxi game would be easy enough to develop in the time. Picking up passengers from one place and dropping them somewhere else. If there is time, this could be expanded to picking people up from their home or picking up parcels from people, etc.

There are various free Car Controllers, but it'd be interesting to me and educational to create my own (simple) car controller.