Backyard Frenzy

Brief Game description:

Backyard Frenzy is a whack-a-mole style minigame within the GameDay Heroes app. The player is tasked with tapping everything that appears except their team's rusher. If they tap their rusher, a button appears which the player must tap three times to resume play. If the player taps a whistle, it clears the field. The game ends after forty-five seconds have passed. Power ups can be used to help the player or hinder their opponents.

Detailed Info:

Backyard Frenzy was meant as an update to help expand the GameDay Heroes application. As time progressed, we were receiving a lot of feedback from the NFL to add additional minigames which featured the rushers. Having designed the teams system, I was playing with the idea of leveraging a player's current allegiance to a team against the other teams. This resulted in Backyard Frenzy. The players of NFL GameDay Heroes have a team they love, and I used this love to keep them from tapping their team. Instead, they are tapping the opposing teams' rushers for points. The whistle was added as a "super weapon", something to excite the player when they see it. When one of these appears, the players jump for it due to its power at giving them quick points. 

The Update:

You'll notice in the description that players must tap a button three times to resume gameplay. This actually wasn't the initial design upon release. The first version of Backyard Frenzy was exclusively released on mobile devices, and if the player tapped their own mascot they would have to shake the device. The button came along because we were receiving feedback that shaking an iPad was incredibly difficult. The players were having issues holding the larger mobile devices in one hand, tapping with the other and transitioning to holding it with two hands and shaking the device. So the button was my response to make gameplay easier. The player would no longer have to transition to different holds on the device. They could simply hold the device with one hand and continue tapping with the other hand. This also solved the issue of how the game would function when we decided to port it to PC. 

Disclaimer: Art done by artists at JumpStart - Knowledge Adventure.