It's a nice idea...
...but I think it needs a little work. The big issue I had was that the weapons didn't have any effect on the enemies. What I mean is, if someone got shot with a arrow and didn't die, they were fine. I know in real life, if you have a arrow sticking out of your leg, you're gonna be limping or walking slower.
The second thing is, you need more weapons. Think about, you're in a mall, there are tons of weapons. Such as:
- Flame arrows
- Poison tipped arrows
- Tranquilizer darts
- 50lb medicine ball that bounces and keeps hitting people
- Toxic gas
- Flaming tennis ball that explodes after 5 seconds
- Sticky bombs
- Throwing knifes
- Blow darts
- Spray can and a lighter
- Molotov cocktails
I'm sure you can see how these would effect the shop lifters, such as being on fire and running around causing others to catch on fire.
Difficulty changer (it would effect how much money you get and the amount of enemies and the health amount).
Different firing modes would be awesome too.
I'm not sure if there are different levels or not, but I think each level should have it's own unique weapons and such for that department, but as well, you should be able to buy defensive shit to deter shoplifters. Such as:
- Throwable cats that run and attack the first person or birds that shit and slow down people (unique for the pet store)
- Bowling balls (unique for the sport store)
The signs that just pop up randomly should be able to be shot down after like 5-10 hits or something so you can smash them.
Also, if you do have levels, then you can have bosses at the end of each one.
Additional, you could have a arcade mode. It would be a map of the whole layout of the mall. Depending which levels you have beat, would be the levels you could play. Each level would offer a few unique shop lifters as well as some of the same.
I don't really agree with having all the weapons on the main fighting screen, especially since you probably won't even have 1 ammo for some of them. I think you should be able to pick and choose which weapons you want to bring into battle, depending where you are at, with a max of 6 or whatever. Of coarse, you can view all your acquire weapons and hired staff on your break. Then, you select which weapons you want to use. Money depending, you could re-hire some of your staff (more on that later).
If you get to endless shift, does that feature come up on the main screen after you lose?
If you made enough money, it would wild if you could hire other people from their shifts to come work on yours. This would provide you with extra defense. Depending on how much you want to spend is how quality your gonna get. I think the basic stats would be weapon they use, accuracy, and rate of fire. Some people might have a really good weapon, but suck at it, even though you really need that weapon for which department you are in. As well, everytime your shift is over, the units up for selection would change since they are randomized. So, if you don't like the selection, come back next shift, but as the quality of the unit increases, so does the price. I think pricing them around 300-3000 would be fair.
I'm not saying your game sucks because it doesn't have all these ideas implemented, I'm just throwing out as much ideas as I can so you have a few different ways to improve this game or others, expect for the first idea. Weapons should effect people even if they don't kill 'em.