Serious Game Classification

LoveCatch HyperDevbox Japan, HyperDevbox Japan, 2009  

Informations Analyses Discussion
 

Classification

SERIOUS GAME
(Edugame)

Keywords

Purpose

Besides play, this title features the following intents:
  • Educative message broadcasting

Market

This title is used by the following domains:
  • Entertainment
  • Education

Audience

This title targets the following audience:
Age : 12-16 / 17-25 / 8-11
General Public

Gameplay

The gameplay of this title is Game-based
(designed with stated goals)

The core of gameplay is defined by the rules below:

Similar games


LoveCatch Ai-kun is a cute pink cupid (who calls himself "[your] little love friend") who needs your help - he needs to catch the hearts falling down from the sky in order to make you and your lover retain your relationship, and he can't do it alone! You need to help him shoot the hearts by writing their numbers before they crash down on the ground, heartbroken (literally!)!

Gameplay consists of helping Ai-kun by writing the numbers of the colored hearts that slowly drift down from the top of the screen to shoot at them. Shooting multiple hearts with the same color rewards you with "hit bonuses" at the end of each level. The objective is to fill the Love Barometer all the way up to clear each stage. Missing hearts and letting them fall to the bottom will reduce your score and the Love Barometer. There are also different kinds of colored numerical hearts, such as hearts you must touch to reveal the number, hearts that change color when tapped, hearts that constantly change color and will only focus on a specific color when tapped or a heart with wings you must quickly shoot at to activate the temporary powerup "Love Barrier". You can also collect golden coins, and when you have 50 coins in possession, the "LoveMachine" slot machine will appear and automatically start to play. The LoveMachine will randomly stop the reels on it's own, and will reward you with bonus points if it gets three of the same reel in a row, and will continue playing for 25 coins per reel spin.

On occasion, a gift box will show up. Touching the box will trigger either one of three things, a math quiz, "Wheel of Luck" or the appearance of Ai-kun's "little friend" (a devil) on the playfield. The math quiz requires you to quickly answer one or more easy math problems under a short amount of time so you can "win a gift for your lover" - answer well and you are rewarded with the "gift" which will give you bonus points. The "Wheel of Luck" is an event where a wheel (with eight segments, half of them being a picture of Ai-kun, and the other half a picture of a dark blue cloud with a face (Thunder)) will automatically appear and spin itself. If the arrow lands on Ai-kun, the player will be rewarded with "Super Shot", in which Ai-kun will clone himself into three and will automatically shoot every heart on screen for temporary amount of time - if it lands on Thunder, the player will be punished via the "Thunder" penalty, in which Thunder will appear from the top of the screen and blow a gust of wind which will push all of the hearts down to the bottom of the screen, thus reducing the player's score and Love Barometer. Ai-kun's "little friend" can appear from the box, in which he will break the hearts slowly drifting down on the screen. To defeat him, you have to wait for a number to appear on him just before he breaks another heart, and then quickly write said number down to shoot at him.

After clearing a stage and before moving on to the next, you will enter a bonus round to earn some more points, in which the bonus round would be either a color matching game, or collecting the hearts falling through pinball/pachinko-like pins from Ai-kun's "little friend" into Ai-kun's basket.

There are 40 levels in all to complete. There's also an optional two player mode called "Love Test", where two players (or "lovers") will take turns in order to calculate the two players' love for each other. Online global highscore leaderboards are also available. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : Mobile (Android) - iPhone / iPod Touch

Links