move38 / wham

モグラ退治 (Whack-a-mole) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agjaa1DyKyA

モグラ退治 (Whack-a-mole)

by Dan King, Vanilla Liu, Junege Hong, Justin Ha, Kris Atanasoski and Jonathan Bobrow

INSERT GIF OF GAMEPLAY

Number of Blinks	Number of Players	Duration of Gameplay	Recommended Ages
6+	1 (or more)	2 - 5 minutes	6 & Up

Objective

So you thought you were a greenthumb, turns out, another critter's got plans for your purty crops. Keep this pesky mole out of your garden by bopping it on the head. Unfortunately for you, this critter has friends and they like to pop up with increasing frequency, let one get out for too long and you're whole crops will spoil. By the end of this game, your greenthumb might just be a black and blue thumb!

Setup

Arrange the Blinks so that there are 2 rows of 3. Double-click a single Blink to send all of them into ready mode (Blue). Double-click once again when you are ready to start the game (Green).

Gameplay

Use one hand, both, or friends as well to keep these pesky critters out of your garden. Hit one too late and it's over for you. When the mole (Orange) is above ground for a while it shows how close to spoiling your garden it is with a Red ring that gets faster and faster as the game progresses.

...and of course, where it all began

wham's Issues

Don't allow moles to pop up while the flash is cooling off

Misses are not yet penalized

Seems like a 3 strikes rule might make a lot of sense here. Could be messaged by increasingly dangerous looking animations. Miss 1 = Green fade Blue, Miss 2 = Blue fade Purple, Miss 3 = Purple fade RED... Dead.

High Score Board

Keep track of high scores? Sign your win with a color combination... super cryptic, but perhaps super special too! Robin Baumgarten's Line Wobbler does a nice job of hidden high score board

Multiplayer version (different color moles)

Victory state w/ animation needed

Better death animation

Evenly distributed moles in multiplayer

A missed mole should count as a strike, not end game...

Not certain about this one, but sort of feel like strikes for missed moles could help support beginner play and reinforce the idea of the strikes. Not convinced this is better, just noticed in play test that the strikes feel like game over because people expect game over.

A win condition?!

Might not be necessary, let people play until their hands wear out. I think this is actually more fun. Might need to up the hardness a little bit to make sure gameplay isn't boring, but it is pretty close to that difficulty threshold already.

better setup animation

On click, show mole presenting themselves (next to each other).
after presented, they drop down and pop up randomly.

Improve the timing so the game continues to get harder

Movement as a mechanic for game play

Perhaps some of the moles need to be moved rather than whacked! In this case, they show a different animation and you need to find them new neighbors. This could be really, really difficult. But something that you can only really do with Blinks 👍

Score keeping

Let the collective keep track of the number of hits, duration of gameplay, and perhaps the number of misses... Not currently penalized for misses, that should maybe change, but a separate feature request :)