Hanging and gliding sounds like cool addition to jumping (and sometimes sliding) every platform game uses. You could greatly improve gameplay by allowing player to hang and glide a lot (well not too much, but enough). I would go for self replenishing stamina.

OK self replenishing stamina it is.

Right now I have it in 640x480x16. With 32x32 tiles, which works good. I'm using Toadstool (?) from mario 2 as the character, with no animation at the moment. All collision is perfect. Jumping is perfect. Screen scrolls left/right only at the moment. He can hang on edge tiles only. When you jump and collide with an edge tile while holding the space bar down he stays there. If you let go of space he falls, if you press up, he
climbs up. That hanging is very primitive at the moment. Once I get a hanging animation I can make it more fluid. Controls are LEFT/RIGHT to move, LCONTROL to jump. SPACE to hang. I'm thinking about making SPACE glid also. So if you're in the air and you hit SPACE, and there isn't a collision with edge tile, you will grid as long as you hold space down, and as long as you have stamina. You can let go and press again to fall faster and catch yourself. This can give you time for some extra stamina. Could have a really tall map where that comes into play.

Squirrely (I need a name) will make a grunt sound when she graps onto the ledge. And more grunting as she climbs up. Not sure about the gliding sound? A windy sound maybe?

[EDIT]
Michael Jensen, I'm very open to suggestions. That's why I put this post here. I want to her what people like.

[EDIT2]
I'm hoping to have a Demo (early version) within the next few weeks, demonstrating these features, to get some feel feedback from you guys. Once I get the feel down, I'll start on the Level Editor so I can add features and make a real game from it.

I want her to have the tuff girl attitude, but still a lady, like Lara Croft (exploror type), so Lorna is to close to Lara. I agree a gimmicky name would be bad.

I like the idea of a parachute opening sound. I'll see how that works.

Not to thrilled on the mission. I really want the game to be a story, where twists and turns happen. I want her to be an explorer who is always looking for the next treasure. I want her to struggle, and have her personality come out. I want people to relate to her. Feel sorry for her and kick butt with her. I don't want a mindless jump and run platform game. In my editor I plan on having still frame cutscences, that I can put in, like in Max Paine, to feed the storyline.

...or some other kind of nut. not strawberry, they don't eat that!
And if she is going to have a name similar to Lara, she must have big boobs!

the parachute opening sound is exactly what i was thinking. a suggestion for the gliding however... don't allow the player to glide up, or move upward by "flapping" or whatever. it should just be: get up high enough, or jump, then hold the glide button and you will glide forward and down. this isn't a bird, it's a squirrel.

EDIT: i'm very interested in this game . i'll follow it all the way through

Yes they should be able to continue gliding, but since they are falling when they do it, some sort of downward velocity penalty should be added at the beginning of the glide, and then it evens out overtime if they manage to keep gliding (fairly quickly).

Assuming the squirrel stands up on two feet...

it should take a variable amount of health away depending on the distance fallen. However the distance at which damage starts should be pretty high, since the squirrel can fly and is obviously comfortable in vertigo situations.

[EDIT] when the squirrel lands on the ground from a normal distance, play the standard "foot landing" sound and act as normal.

when the squirrel lands from a high up distance, but still a safe one, it should make an "oomph" sound, and maybe play a "harder" landing animation, and be forced to stand still for about half a second before being able to run again.

when it lands from a very high, damaging distance, it makes a bone crunch (or similar) sound effect, an amount of health is lost, and plays an "extremely hard" landing animation (like a cringing pain movement, maybe flashing red to show damage) and stops the character for a second and a half.

When landing at high speed you could let the squirrel automatically activate gliding before hitting the ground to land safely, or at least have that as an option for players that don't want to do it manually.

I'm dumb!... and make sure they have to plan it carefully, so if they "brake" too late, they still hit the ground at high speed.

I like the sound of Acorn Raider, but Lorna just sounds like an ugly name to me... it's sounds like you're doing a take-off style of tomb raider, I think it's almost required that the name be a rip off of tombraider only slightly modified, sorta like myst, and pyst, altho I never played either -- and thinking about this game now, I really don't think seeing a chipmonk babe with big boobs is going to make me not want to play as it's kind of gross and disturbing...

edit:
also if you're going to be doing a tomb raider style take off on the character, you really need to go that way with level themes/feeling too, it needs to be an indoors type thing for a lot of the play if this is what you want to do -- inside of the tree maybe? perhaps owl like holes that you can go into...

Nice squirrels there, but remember that those are not glidersquirrels!
This lady needs skin from arms to legs to form a kind of wings.
That makes it a little bit trickier to make an attractive look, but it shouldn't be a problem.
I'd like to see one with some muscles, but not bodybuilder!

In the vein of TA; have her make small sexy grunts whenever she bumps into something, or falls down

Have you got anythin try:able ready? It would be fun to check out, just to see how you're thinking