Only A Day Out And Graveyard Defense Has Been Exploited

zacharyFeb 28, 2014

So Graveyard Defense has been online for only a day and it has already been exploited to build up a massive high score. Not that we are really tracking these scores. But that is not the point.

I let my daughter Deana play the game and she quickly found a way to exploit the game mechanics to beat my best score of 120 or so points. It isn’t a big deal, only a weakness in the way the game was designed. But it is still there.

As you may recall, the game is played by using the arrow keys to attack monsters as they come out of the graves. Eventually, the monsters come out so quickly and attack faster and you become overwhelmed and are defeated. The exploit lies in that basic interaction between the arrow keys and the monsters.

Because there is no penalty, other than a wasted attack, to hitting a wrong arrow, players can simply spam the arrow keys to rack up a high score. That is exactly what my daughter did. She used four fingers to mash the arrow keys repeatedly. So she was effectively attacking all four directions at once. At least for a while. She was still overwhelmed and she lost. But that isn’t the point. The fact is, the game has a weakness.

This isn’t really a big deal for a game made in under two days. It does show that extensive testing of a design concept is necessary for a successful game.

I don’t have any plans to fix the game at the moment. But I may revisit it and implement the change in gameplay I mentioned in the previous blog post at some point in the future.

So for now, have fun spamming those arrow keys and rack up the highest scores you can. I wish I had put in place a way to track those scores. It would be fun to watch.