Title: Legend of the Golden Hammer ~ A Whack-A-Mole RPG

Goal: Level up, spend skill points on stats (hp, hp regen, stamina, stam regen, str), buy stronger hammers (plush, plastic toy, wood, cement block, etc.) with the tickets you earn (like Chuck E. Cheese's), unlock more themed whack-a-mole arcade game (sports, anime, super hero, water, greek gods, etc.), reach max level 72 and fufill the prophecy.

Story intro: You're a new kid walking home from school and you notice the overweight owner of the old arcade shop giving you the most peculiar look. He motions you to come in so he can have a closer look at you. He apologizes for acting so weird and says you have some of the features of the person in the prophecy. He claims that this is the year a young lad with incredible strength will come forth to weild the legendary golden hammer.

Just to make sure you aren't what he was looking for, he gives you a free game on the beginners whack-a-mole arcade and hands you the beginners plushie hammer.

Game play (for tablets): Games are only one minute long. Reaction time of swing depends on your STR. Each swing takes from your STAmina. Some of the holes move around. There are different types of plastic moles so you have to pay attention to what you hit.

Let's use the sports themed arcade for example. Imagine a small baseball diamond on part of the arcade surface. Put a mole hole on each base, one in center for pitcher and a hole that goes back and forth from home to first.

Types of moles that will randomly pop up:
1. Regular, just takes 1 hit to knock down, fan mole with flag in right hand
2. Medium regular, 3 hits, ?
3. Hard regular, 5 hits, football uniform dressed mole with helmet
4. Regular damage, 1 hit, basket ball mole pops up and starts to throw mini basketball at you. whack him fast to avoid taking damage.
5. Med damage, 3 hits, baseball mole pops up and throws mini ball in air and starts to swing bat
6. High damage, 5 hits, hockey mole
7. Block view, 1 hit, kinda like a mole that will throw a pie at the screen or set off a smoke bomb to block your view, swipe back and forth on the entire screen a few times to clear the screen
8. Sticky, DON'T HIT, like a mole that's blowing a bubble gum bubble, if you hit it, your hammer gets stuck and you swipe back and forth on the hammer area to get it lose again
9. Instant high damage, DON'T HIT, like a mole strapped in TNT
10. Mystery box, 1 hit, contains all the mini plastic moles you can collect, may show up once per game
11. Key holder, DON'T HIT, when your level is high enough, it might pop up to throw you the key to the next themed arcade
12. do I need more?

Maybe 10ish successful kills in a row will put you in blazing mode.

If you survive the minute without your HP reaching zero, you get EXP and Tickets based on your score. You get 3 skill points to spend each time you level up.

Your opinions/thoughts on this game idea? Would you pay 9.99 to buy the full version? Free version would cap level to 6, 8 free games per day, watch ads to play more games.

Add vending machine in the arcade so you can buy boosts?


Story spoiler: The arcade owner made up the prophecy just to get kids' hopes up so they can keep playing and buying all the cheaply made mallets. He knows the kids that excel quickly will eventually find out. Once you reach a high enough level, he'll ask you to test out the new machine in the back room which is rigged to bomb you like crazy. You wake up with your hands, feet, mouth bound up and he tells you he's gonna ship you over seas as a slave to make plastic moles for his machines. You'll have to wait til the game comes out to find out how he excapes and becomes legend. :P

Moving to Game Design.

>Your opinions/thoughts on this game idea? Would you pay 9.99 to buy the full version?

Well, the issue with short (1min) mobile/tablet games is, that only the final game will give you enough information to really rate it. So, to be honest, I find it not very interesting, but this might change completely when I see the game in action.

But for sure, I would not pay 10 bucks for it. Most likely would play the demo and put it away due to missing depth, sorry ;-)

Your opinions/thoughts on this game idea? Would you pay 9.99 to buy the full version? Free version would cap level to 6, 8 free games per day, watch ads to play more games.

If its a PC game on Steam, and there is NO free version, and the game is actually WORTH 10 bucks (which means a pretty average length/size Indie game on Steam nowadays), sure, why not? The idea might be interesting, depending on how far you take the concept.

If I am expected to pay 10 bucks for a simple board where I can whack differently colored moles with a hammer and some upgrade, a clear NO! Sounds like about every other phone game on the market. And they usually are free, or 1$ at max.

If you do deliver a real RPG (I mean, where the fights actually have something tactical, and you do more than just whack moles, overworld and all, maybe something more for dungeons than just a whack-a-mole board), the presentation is good and it is NOT a mobile game... maybe I would pay 10 bucks.

Asking for ten bucks on mobile though is most probably setting you up for failure. Square Enix might be able to ask this much money for a FF XXXX remake.... but then, Square Enix is Squaresoft AND Enix combined and taps into the memories of their youth for multiple generations of gamers, just as their games do. And while the game in question might be old, its a full 20+ hours expierience and what I have seen the remakes seem to be pretty well made.

Is you wackamole just as wellmade and can entertain me for 20+ hours with an awesome campaign? Even if it would, who are you again? Your not Squaresoft nor Enix, and clearly you are not Square AND Enix.

Make it something in the lowest single digit regions, or sell zero games at all. If you don't like that (prices have come down way too much on mobile), move over to PC and try steam.

Thanks for the feedback guys! So 10 bucks is probably way too much to ask for because of the simplicity of gameplay. And the game is mislabeled as an RPG when it's more of an action game. :D

One whack-a-mole style game that I played for many, many lunch hours is Tontie by Eyezmaze. Not sure if it was more due to finally completing the game or if it was due to worrying about carpel tunnel syndrome from the pain surging down my wrist at the end of a long game that was the reason I stopped playing. I only very quickly scanned your post but I think it touches on some elements that you've described, though much less back story than even the little that you posted. I found it to be a very fun game and I'm pretty sure that there are many followers of the developer that would agree. So I'd say that your idea has as much potential to succeed or fail as any game does.

However, as mentioned by others in this thread, it doesn't sound as though your marketing plan ($10 to buy the game) is quite the way to go. It's very unlikely that I'd pay that for a new game by Eyezmaze. Maybe $1 or two but even then whenever I have to think about paying anything for a game, it usually discourages me from even trying it at all. Eyezmaze developed a following by building a number of small games to be played for free of which Tontie was only one of them. Now, you don't necissarily have to go the free software route but maybe think more about various approaches to distributing your products.

One whack-a-mole style game that I played for many, many lunch hours is Tontie by Eyezmaze..

Holy cow! Thanks so much. I was checking the play store earlier to see if anyone has done something similar and I didn't find anything I liked. Now I can check what was fun and not fun with their version. Thanks? :D

How about you make a whack a mole game but instead of moles you use douchebag celebrities . I don't know about anyone else but i'd sure like to slap the hell out of kanye west.

This is an old topic, so hope you don't mind my revisiting it...

The stamina stat may not be necessary and could just be annoying. The player's own stamina will come into play anyway, as multi-hit moles will require them to tap the screen a _lot_!

You could cut down on the tapping, introduce more variety and make the game more like an RPG by introducing puzzle elements. For example, moles that you have to tap in sequence or your blows do nothing. Or swipe the screen to remove the spiked hats from enemies before bopping them. Pin smart bombs could pop the bubblegum mole's bubbles so you can dispatch them safely. You could also feature a wider variety of weapons such as charged hammers that build up force for their next hit while you are not tapping the screen (good for small numbers of powerful moles) or wide mallets that do little damage but hit multiple holes at the same time (great for whacking lots of weak enemies).

Your background story sounds super creepy! Could be an interesting black humour direction, a bit like Binding Of Isaac. I don't know if you might be overly limiting your audience with that.

This is an old topic, so hope you don't mind my revisiting it...

The stamina stat may not be necessary and could just be annoying. The player's own stamina will come into play anyway, as multi-hit moles will require them to tap the screen a _lot_!

You could cut down on the tapping, introduce more variety and make the game more like an RPG by introducing puzzle elements. For example, moles that you have to tap in sequence or your blows do nothing. Or swipe the screen to remove the spiked hats from enemies before bopping them. Pin smart bombs could pop the bubblegum mole's bubbles so you can dispatch them safely. You could also feature a wider variety of weapons such as charged hammers that build up force for their next hit while you are not tapping the screen (good for small numbers of powerful moles) or wide mallets that do little damage but hit multiple holes at the same time (great for whacking lots of weak enemies).

Your background story sounds super creepy! Could be an interesting black humour direction, a bit like Binding Of Isaac. I don't know if you might be overly limiting your audience with that.

wow! very neat ideas, thanks!