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A jam submission

Don't Whack A Mole!View game page

High-octane High-score game based on the classic of a similar name!
Submitted by SenorGurki — 1 hour, 44 minutes before the deadline

Play game

Don't Whack A Mole!'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Enjoyment#7283.5903.590
Overall#11123.5853.585
Presentation#11523.7213.721
Creativity#19113.4433.443

Ranked from 61 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
You play as the mole rather than the mallet!

Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam

Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam

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Comments

Viewing comments 51 to 32 of 51 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+2)

really cool take on the theme, gameplay felt pretty satisfying but got a bit repetitive after a while; maybe a few powerups or more holes could be fun to experiment with. the sound effects were pretty nice and the music felt fitting to the game. had alot of fun!

Developer(+2)

Working on fixing the repetitiveness in post-jam udpate ;)

Submitted(+1)

Holey moley, that was fun! A nice take on the theme, well done!

Submitted(+1)

Really great job!  I love the fast paced gameplay, art style is also great!  Awesome work :D

Submitted(+1)

Ahaha, we had the same concept but did it differently !
I like the feeling of last second dodge :D. Good job !
It will have been adicting if the difficulty ramped up. (it's so to hard to quick for my skill)

Submitted(+1)

This is hard!! I need to work on my reaction time a lot more...

Developer

I have heard this a few times! I am planning on implementing a difficulty setting, as for some this is a good level of challenge and for some it's very difficult. I had originally wanted to add a difficulty setting but ran out of time.
Thank you for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Fun game to play! Good job!!!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

This was really fun to play, I think it has a lot of potential for a full release! Maybe adding some form of bonus point collectables to encourage the player to take dangerous risks for better score could improve the gameplay a bit!

I love the arcade vibes and how relatively simple it was to play (only having 4 holes was a good call) I enjoy this more than the original whack a mole arcade games haha.

Developer(+1)

Post-jam update I'm planning to add some extra "loot" to insentivise more risky play indeed! I've a couple of features planned that will have to wait for a later patch, but I do agree that there needs to be something else to spice up the gameplay :)

Thank you for the kind review, and I'm glad you enjoyed the game :D

Submitted(+1)

A fun and, heh, arcadie challenge game. Well done!

Submitted(+1)

Really fun game :)

Submitted(+1)

underrated, might play more after the jam

Submitted(+1)

really fun concept! i like the art style and how the wack-a-mole cabinet contrasts with everything else. although, the game can pretty easily be cheesed by circling around the holes really fast. also, i feel like the timer at the bottom is kind of useless, since (correct me if im wrong) the hammer tries to hit the mole at a consistent rate. itd be cool if there was a ticking sound effect right before the hammer hits.

but all in all, this is a really good game for 48 hours. great job!

Developer(+1)

Ooooh the ticking sound is a fantastic suggestion! So that there is visual (red flashing) and auditory ques for when it is about to hit!! I will add this in the current version of the game, thank you so much for that suggestion, it flew over my head when making this version.

And yes, I agree that at the moment the game is a tad easy once you get used to it (as long as you have good reaction time). In the latest version of the game, I am planning to make the hammer hit faster depending on what score you are on, so that the rate at which the hammer hits gets progressively faster and thus makes  the game harder and less easy to fall into auto-pilot mode.

Thank you so much for the feedback! I really appreciate it :D

Submitted(+1)

Well done. This idea is really great and unique. I enjoyed the gameplay very much and the game it's nicely polished. At first I thought that the goal is to get hit but then after reading the help I got the idea. Great job. Only thing, maybe make it progressively difficult.

Submitted(+1)

That was fun! I liked the idea! Felt really good to dodge the hammer.

I don't have much feedback. Maybe increase the points exponentially depending on how long the mole has been out? To push more the risk-reward idea of just being outside a little longer.

The sfx helped a ton with the moment-to-moment gameplay as well!

Overall a really nice game, thanks for sharing!

Developer

Heya! Thanks for playing!

I'm glad you had fun :) at the moment the speed at which the score grows is linear, so it does feel quite slow. Your suggestion actually gave me a fantastic idea, to have a visual indicator whenever you reach some score milestone and have a little sound play (think combo meter).

Glad the sound effects were helpful! The game didn't feel as satisfying without them and the screenshake.

Submitted(+1)

I got a score of 15331 points.
Great execution and that is very polished for a jam game. I found it really interesting to see what someone else made with the idea of whack-a-mole, which we also used. 
Great Job!
And I'd be interested to hear what you think of our game :)

Submitted(+1)

Really fun and satisfying as I slowly got better at the dodging the mallet. It was a bit hard initially to understand where the hammer hits and how long you could stay out, but once I figured that out, it was great. Nice job!

Submitted(+1)

This was fun to play! I didn’t really understand how to dodge after staying out, though. When the hammer comes to your location, it whacks twice in quick succession, and while I can dodge the first one, the second seemed to very often predict which hole I would go to next (with like 60% accuracy), without leaving me any time to move out of the way like I’d normally have.

Developer

Hmm, that sounds odd! The hammer hits one of the four holes randomly every two seconds, or if you stay out for too long, so there is a chance you got unlucky with the timing and where the hammer chose to hit next after the "out too long" hit and immediately got hit (I've had this happen and ruin good runs 😭) I think the solution to this is possibly make the hammer hits slightly less random so that they're a bit easier to predict and fairer. Often times the next hole you chose unluckily happens to be the one the hammer also chooses 😅


Thank you for playing and the feedback! I'll need to take a look at how to make that feel more fair :)

Submitted(+1)

Randomness can be a bit weird, so it’s definitely possible I just got unlucky. And now that I’m playing it again, it doesn’t happen as often anymore. Maybe the last few times I was somehow on a really tight cycle where the second hit happened almost immediately? I’m unsure. The timing of it feels a bit unpredictable though.

Developer

I think there might be a bug where the hammers timer sometimes doesn't reset when it flies over to hit you if you've dodged it before. I reckon there is something that's not quite functioning as intended. I'll try take a look and see if I can smooth it out. I plan on making a v1.1 and uploading it after the voting period!

Submitted(+1)

Fun game, you did a lot of things right! I really like the risk/reward ratio of wanting to stay out as long as possible without getting hit, also the red highlight that indicates that a field is about to be hit really helps, although that could have been there for a little bit longer before the strike actually comes down. I would have also liked it if you did not come out of hiding on a timer but as soon as you selected the hole you wanted to go to next or maybe on another button press because sometimes I knew that the hammer was busy and I would have been safe but I still had to wait for my timer to go down before I could start collecting points again.
Overall this was a fun little game though, well done!

Developer

Thanks for playing! I do agree that the red flashing is a lil short on time, at first it was for an entire second, which was too long, and now its for I believe half or a quarter of a second, which is now too short.
And regarding the coming out of hiding on timer suggestion, I had made the decision for the mole to come out of the holes on a timer as I found that there would be significantly less pressure on the player to make quick decisions (and thus mistakes), and the random whacking of the hammer would look a little less convincing.
I found that the whacks being at the same time as you come out of hiding to be a sort of parallel to how it is in real life, where often times you end up hitting the wrong hole because you were anticipating the mole to pop out there.
I appreciate the feedback! I will keep pondering the idea of removing the timer. I'd like to create a test version of the game with your suggestion because that's really the only way to test it properly.
Again, thank you for playing and leaving such a lovely and detailed comment :D

Submitted(+1)

Small neat game! Not really much to say here, honestly...

Good job on making this, I had fun with the game!

Submitted(+1)

This was fun! Could work well in a mobile format as well. Good job!

Submitted(+1)

Nice take on the theme! Nice graphics and all around an enjoyable game, my top score was around 1k :) good job!

Viewing comments 51 to 32 of 51 · Next page · Last page