Keyboard Whack-A-Mole (v2)

How To Play:

Use the keyboard letters.

Pesky moles will appear from holes, WHACK them by pressing keys.

Play original mode: 5 waves, 30 seconds each.

Or play endless mode: no time limit, 3 strikes and you're out!

 

Give Feedback Here!

 

Technical Details

• GitHub Link
• Original Prototype Link

 

Lecture Details

Particles

One of the main things I wanted to add to the original was particles. This was something I skipped initially because the game is mostly made on the canvas and putting in particles required some extra steps. Particles were added for when the player hits an empty hole and one for when they hit a hole with a mole. These feature dust particles that get kicked up then dissipate in the air. The successful hit particle also includes an animated flash intended to look like a comic book-esk smack. In endless mode there are a few additional particle systems for letting a mole get away and on the miss counter. 

Polish

To polish the game the new particles were added. The original animated swirl that came off of a mole when hit was removed to free up space for the particle system. I also added a volume control for music and sfx. The game is very loud on first load so this is a quality of life feature that I felt the original game lacked. A new endless mode was added so players could try playing without a time limit. It gives the game a more arcade-y feel . In it I tried a new way of increasing the spawn rate over time that references an animation curve variable. The lecture on particles had some interesting ways to use curves to effect particles and I tried applying that same logic to other areas of the design as well. 

 

Design Details

Iteration

My focus on this game was less on creating new things and more on improving existing structures. There were a few bugs present in the past version that I took the time to address here. Such as a mole spawning underneath a player (where they can't see it) and moles getting stuck in idle unable to remove themself after being hit. These drew much more attention in the endless mode so they needed to be fixed. I took playtester feedback on google forms for the original version and used it to inform what kinds of changes I made. The addition of endless mode is one example but there were a few other communication details that I changed as well to improve clarity. Playtesting feedback is my guiding light. 

Freshness

The original version of this game lacked particles since this is a system that doesn't mesh well with canvas UI. I used this opportunity to explore how to fuse these two systems. The easiest way I found, and the one I used in this version, is to change the canvas from overlay to world space. Although this doesn't automatically put canvas UI on top of the game scene, I found that it gives a lot more control over where the UI is placed. That allowed particles to be placed on the same layer. 

I was really interested in some of the concepts from the particle system lecture. Particularly about the variable customization. Making a variable that is random between two constants is something I am familiar with but the curves had a lot more use than I realized. I used this same concept in the endless mode's spawn rate. I use an animation curve variable to give the game a changing spawn rate that has periods of higher and lower stress as it gets progressively faster. I believe this gives the endless mode a more interesting difficulty curve. 

 

Additional Info

Art assets from Sunnyside World asset pack were used in making this. 

Contains music ©2023 Retro Indie Josh (https://retroindiejosh.itch.io) Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International