Whack-a-Mole in Python

Score

Hits

Time

Level

Best

⌨️ Controls

← → ↑ ↓ aim the hammer
Space or Enter swing
Clicking or tapping a hole works too — much faster!
P pause • R new game
🎮 Xbox controller? Just plug it in or pair it — the stick and D-pad are the arrow keys, A is SPACE, Menu pauses and View starts again

🎯 How to play

A mole pops out of one hole at a time. Hit it before it ducks back down.
You have 45 seconds.
Every 5 hits you go up a level — and the moles get quicker.
A miss does not move the mole, so hitting every hole in turn will not help you.

🏆 Scoring

Each mole is worth 10 × your level.
Level 1 moles wait 1100 ms; level 10 moles wait only 350.
So the points really pile up once you get going — the last ten seconds are worth more than the first thirty.

🧑‍💻 This whole game is Python

There is almost no JavaScript on this page. The browser downloaded Pyodide — a complete Python interpreter compiled to WebAssembly — and then ran the .py files in funtime/pylib/. Python does the rules, the maths and the drawing.

File	What it does	Good functions to try re-writing
pylib/whack_rules.py	The rules: the mole, the clock, the scoring	`random_hole`, `mole_interval`, `whack`, `update_game`
pylib/whack_draw.py	Painting the mole — Python calling the canvas	`draw_hole`, `draw_mole`, `hole_at_pixel`
pylib/whack_web.py	The glue: clicks, keyboard, the loop	`do_action`, `on_board_click`, `frame`

🔍 Compare the two versions. Open lib/whack-rules.js and pylib/whack_rules.py side by side — same ideas, two languages.

🛠️ Build it yourself: Build Whack-a-Mole in Python walks you through the functions one at a time.

⚠️ If the game never starts: the page has to read its .py files, which a browser will not do for a page opened straight off your disk. Use the live site, or run python3 -m http.server in the project folder.