When trying to make the game play more fun for Squidz we set out to create a new game mechanic. I knew that we needed the player touching the screen more to give more interaction rather than having them click each pod repeatedly. To improve the game experience we created a system for slashing items as they fall.

Each slash-able item has either a benefit or detriment to it, giving the player a reason to interact with the items. If an item is slashed, either they gain the benefit of the item or avoid the detriment. The key to this game design is to provide more player interaction. With that it elevated the interest in the game by a large factor.