On Dan's suggestion, I downloaded and gave Roknor's Donut Factory a try. I thought it was fun, but it's honestly not quite the type of game that I enjoy.
I thought that the quality was very high, kudos to Hanford on that.

But...

While I was playing, my seven year old daughter wanted to see what I was doing. She immediately climbed into my lap and wanted to try. So we worked on a couple together, and then I reset her back to level 1 and let her go at it on her own.

I swear, she went through all of the demo levels four times, and then starting telling me I should download the rest.

While she was playing, my wife stopped by to watch, and stated that she also wanted to play.

So Hanford, you've got at least one Christmas sale from me, and I'll have to go back and look at "Bad Day" again.

Seeing the look of delight on my daughter's face when she solved a level got me thinking. Why would I ever want to make a game that didn't do the same?!?

So these two are my new target demographic. The fact that there is probably a great deal of overlap between them and a large chunk of the population is nice as well. Who really cares if someone I don't know downloads my game and likes it? When I make a game that my wife wants to play, or that makes my daughter cheer out loud, then I know I've done something relevant.

I've heard the term "Lapware" used to describe that demographic. Basically, a game both parent and child can both enjoy at the same time (a difficult accomplishment). I don't have much of substance to say on how to go about that, really, just wanted to share the term ;)

My 4 year old son found an icon for the shareware version Retro64's "Best Friends" game. I ended up registering it as well, he played it every day. He could beat the shareware demo, it was pretty amazing. He would show me the nag screen and point at some screenshots from the other worlds and say "I want to play this!"

shareware marketing is so effective on young unbiased consumers :)

Now this is the way how games create emotions. Not the game itself, but the fact that child climbs to his/her dad's lap and wants to play computer game :)

Shareware - connecting family ;)

Hey, what a great story, thanks for sharing! It’s one thing to get sales, but it’s another to hear about a family enjoying the game together, and then to hear someone say that it has influenced them.

Alas, I have no kids, but my girlfriend did play the game a lot during testing and helped influence design choices. The close-up profile shot of Rocknor’s head was her suggestion because you can’t see his face when he’s working the Particle Crane.

I had a lot of people playtest the game with me in the room to see how they were reacting ... to see anyone's face light up when they get a solution is a great feeling. Keep me posted with your progress ....

~Hanford

We've had a few people complain that their Palm Pilots were "stolen" by their children, but by far the most interesting was re: a puzzle game, where a woman had suffered neurological damage, and was using the game to exercise the parts of her brain that were damaged.

Games make us better... stronger... faster... (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070700/)