About Holey Moley

Holey Moley is a simple to play, fast-paced game where you smack moles about with hammers, pretty simple stuff, 3 modes of play including:

Quick Play
Hit as many moles as you can in 60 seconds
Survival
Survive the Moley Onslaught and defend yourself with power-ups!
No-Miss
You miss a hit, you die, simple as that!

Each play mode has 3 different difficulty settings which ramp up as the player progresses to keep the game challenging at all levels.

But wait, we added a 2 player mode also!

Yes, with the magic of a Standard controller (bluetooth or otherwise) you can pit your skills and reactions against another player and use battle items to thwart your opponent whilst boosting your own score!

This works across each play mode and really adds to the tension. 2 players can share the same controller for true head to head gaming or use seperate controllers instead.

Backstory

After having some success with Super Grid Run I felt I should make another simple game to release for free. Holey Moley started off as a quick 4 hour game made for a Ludum Dare warm-up, just to see what I could make within 4 hours.

I was quite happy with what I'd done, okay, it's not an original game by any stretch of the imagination but felt fun enough to expand upon and has given me more experience within unity and more insight into making a complete game and taking it to the end, adding all the trimmings that are necessary.

Such as :

  • Adding controller support
  • Integrating Google Games Services (High Scores and Achievements)
  • Multiple game modes
  • Multiple difficulty settings
  • A Two Player Mode , supporting both two seperate controllers and two players on one controller
  • Different moles with different little animations to spruce things up a bit
  • Tuning the difficulty so if it gets too harsh the game calms down a notch to give you a chance again
  • All those little effects that round things off nicely
  • Finding someone more ideal to do vocals for combo announcements
  • Power Ups including Versus Mode Items
  • A How to Play guide for new players
  • Bouncy Menu Transitions

I had a couple of setbacks mid-way through development due to power outages which ended up with losing a months worth of code which really bit me, I wandered whether or not to finish off the project I had started or to move on to another game in-the-works.

Thankfully I chose to press on with this project until completion, which has taken a lot longer than it really should have done, but I still only get a couple of hours here and there in the evenings to develop games so it is to be expected I guess.

Anyway, the game is finished now and it's time to move onto my next game, something a bit larger than the previous two, wish me luck!


Ryan Carson is a web developer, designer and indie game maker who runs a small website company called Refresh Creations in Paignton, Devon. He has a strong passion for both creating and playing games (more on the creating side nowadays) and is lucky enough to have a wonderful wife and little boy who are really great!