D : Bomb A Mole

Hello Gamers,

Hope you enjoy our fun and exciting game. This is our first game ever and we pretty excited about our final product, we hope everyone will have an awesome time bombing a mole!

About us: We are a team of 5 young gamers (2 girls & 3 guys) and excited about finally developing our own game. We enjoyed the challenge and definitely can't wait to learn from your feedback on our game.

Game: Bomb A Mole

https://www.dropbox.com/s/whbryb6wdirvtcv/BombAmole.zip


About the game:

Rules:

You are the flaming squirrel and your job is to stop the moles.
Over time acorns will begin to fall from the tree and you will have two options, touch or destroy.

Touching an acorn will weaponise it (i.e. the acorn will fall faster and will be on fire).
While you are holding an acorn, all other acorns which come into contact with you will be destroyed.
The squirrel has freedom of motion while touching an acorn.

If the acorn reaches the mole, some of your health will be lost and if all your health is lost, you will lose a life.
If you touch an acorn and it fires up, and it doesn't hit a mole then you neither lose a life or gain points. But if
you touch an acorn, it fires up, and it hits a mole you gain 5 points.

Once you score 120 points in level 1 you win and proceed to other levels. The level of difficulty increases the higher you go per level and scoring points becomes even more difficult. The final level of our game is level 4.

Controls:

These are relatively simple, since the game involves only two buttons.

The left button moves your squirrel to the left.
The right button moves your squirrel to the right.

Meet The Development Team:

The team consisted of 2 primary programmers, 1 primary artist and designer, one music and sound specialist and
an all-rounding team co-ordinator (i.e. supported both the Art and Programming sides of development).

Artist and Design Specialist:
Pius Whande

Primary Programmers:
Lubabalo Nazo and Muchenja Namumba

Sound and Music:
Nolizwe Hlope

Team co-ordinator:
Mohamed Tanweer Khatieb

Comments

  • Oh noes! You forgot to attach your game!
  • Its on its way...thanks :)
  • @Muchie said:
    You are the flaming squirrel and your job is to stop the moles.
    Sold! Love the concept :)

    Welcome to the forums!
  • I am excited about our game, I just can't wait to play it. :) Well done to the whole team!!!
  • Well done to all my team members, this has been a real experience and I know we been told this in lectures and discussions over and over, but this project really drove home the fact that game development is a team effort and each member needs to specialize in something, and know other trades as well, just love it! This our first playable, can't wait to play beta version 1 by the end of the day...
  • Cool! I like the levels changing through a sunset thing. Simple, but pretty. And it affects my mood while playing in a way I can't quite put my finger on :)

    If you guys have time at some point it would be cool to animate the moles' death in some way. I didn't get enough feedback while playing - couldn't tell if I was successfully killing the little buggers! More flame on the acorns would also be awesome, but I guess more flame is always awesome :D

  • edited
    @ Kixie : we actually animated that part of the death and drew and animated a normal(brown) and a flaming acon(red,yellow and orange), just need to add them, we've been having problems with crashing after adding some of the animations we made so had to skip them for a bit, our coders are busy attending to that and score + music non-resetting issue. thanx for the feed back... you know it!!! Flames all over the screen, maybe throw the mole on the grill and a lava eruption after you finish the game....
  • Yes indeed. I was meant to make a mole going back down animation too, but I forgot lol. I'm very glad to see that people like our game. Please bear with us on the errors. This is the version between alpha and beta so the major errors are still present. We just wanted our game to be present on the two button game challenge system. Enjoy the game people but overlook its faults. The improved version may yet be appearing in the future. It depends entirely on the willingness of my team and the workload of our courses as we are only second year students.
  • Remember that your game needs a readme.txt file that explains the rules of your game. I started it up and I have no idea what to do so I must now read the forums.
  • edited
    I have a problem with acorns spawning below my character that I have no opportunity to interact with and lose me points :( they all need to spawn above me, and should all have the same starting height.

    I also can't tell the difference between when I'm consuming acorns and when I'm just setting them on fire.

    The squirrel also seems to move very slowly compared to the area he has to cover, meaning the player will always miss some. I think the squirrel can be a little faster. This is especially a problem cause acorns can appear on the other side of the screen close to the ledge the squirrel is standing on. If the squirrel is not already there it's missed, losing you points.

    Some acorns also appear behind the tree making them difficult to see before it's too late.
  • Thanks for all the feedback. We have added a readme to the file on the dropbox link.
    We will definitely work on all the suggestions from you @aodendaal, thanks alot guys.
  • From the team( @vegeta, @kaypeedub, @MTK001, @Crazylu ): thanks to @dislekcia and @Kixie for your comments and suggestions too.
  • Yes. Many thanks indeed :]
  • edited
    Firstly, well done on your first finished game, guys. Most people talk about building a game, but never get around to finishing it. You should be proud. :)

    I'm probably going to come across as harsh here, but that's not my intention. You've done very well, but I have some suggestions for things I feel you need to look at to make the game a bit clearer, smoother and fairer to play. Use them, don't use them, up to you. ;)

    @aodendaal's touched on some main issues, but I want to expand on them:

    1) It's cool that you've got a solid ruleset worked out, but I'm not seeing enough on the screen to communicate those rules clearly to me. Flaming acorns and regular ones do change colour, but they're very difficult to tell apart with so many acorns on the screen. I also can't tell when the squirrel's collected an acorn and is able to destroy them - if you are giving visual feedback on that, it's far too subtle for me. I also struggle to tell if a mole's taken damage or eaten an acorn - they just disappear no matter what.

    2) I also feel that the acorn spawning positions need major adjustment. This is very important. The player is losing health (and lives) for missing acorns that they were never given the opportunity to interact with. As Andre said, this is because the squirrel moves very slowly, but also because acorns spawn under the squirrel, where he can never, ever reach them. Even when I'm doing my best and hitting all the acorns I'm able to, my health bar is still continuously dropping, and there's nothing I can do about it. It's like playing Soccer when your team doesn't even have a goalkeeper - it doesn't feel fair. :(

    3) When I lose a life or clear a level, there's no clear feedback. The background changes suddenly, the acorn positions shift, and I have no idea what's just happened unless I check my life count or the level number (which means taking my eyes off the game and potentially missing acorns). The only time I know precisely what's happened is when I run out of lives and you display the "Game over" message box.


    So to summarise:

    > Ensure that the player knows what's happening and why at all times. You cannot assume that they understand the game as well as you do. After all, you built it. ;)
    > Do your best to make sure that the player can see the game's rules in effect. It's not enough to say that collecting an acorn allows you to destroy others, you need to show it in a clear way. This is probably the hardest part of making any game, but it's also the most important.
    > The game must feel fair. If you are going to penalise the player in any way, you have to give the player a fair chance to prevent that penalty.

    I'll say again - nicely done, guys! It's a very good start. Tune up the game a little, and you'll have something that's really fun to play. :D
    Thanked by 1Muchie
  • wow nice game, but just a few things that I think can make the game more interesting : Things like:

    > a 'speed pill' or a 'power up' acorn - to increase the speed of the player
    > smooth transitions in different levels (or a statement that says 'level 1 complete')
    > a warning sound or effect that your health is running low

    otherwise nice work guys... Thatha Lubhaman
    Thanked by 1Muchie
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