I'm not feeling this concept. There's a massive amount of feature bloat which is an indicator that the game design isn't well focused (I've been there too). The escort mechanics would make a lot of sense if it was centered about wholesome family relationship, but then there's 3 pairs of characters introduced at once and swapping between them prevents me from caring about any of them. There's also knife stabbing right next to the kids, what the heck.
Making a game like this is no easy task because you will usually be fighting against AI or in this case juggle with different controls in a clunky way.
I'm giving up at the ball kicking. The one with tumbling down on blue blocks seemed to be nearly pixel perfect for me because of how many attempts it took, and the next level was even worse. It's also bugged because it looks like I have to collide with the ball bag again by jumping before I can kick again.
The oddworld inspiration makes sense now since I never played it. My thoughts about this game are, what if you took some inspiration from Ico?