Lumber Gathering Game?

[Erichermit]

In my game Enex2, I like to have a sidequest for almost every town and a little minigame you can play as a reward. For instance in a mining town you can do a sidequest to learn how to mine and craft ores into armor for your characters. A port has a fishing game.

one of the towns in the forest I made have a game where you go out into a special forest meant for gathering wood. Wood is traded to the Town Fletcher for credit in his store, which you may use to buy powerful bows for your archer.

The game is as follows :One tree in the wood sparkles. The Wood is rather mazelike so you must search for the tree. Upon finding it, chopping the tree has a low chance of receiving some wood, and a high chance of just failing.

This is fun for like, half a minute. If even. Plus, it doesnt even make sense. Why is only one tree cuttable at a time?

So I'm trying to come up with a new game for gathering wood. Some things I have to work with include Treants, Monks, other Lumberjacks, etc. or anything you could think of like insects or obstacles.(as the forest is considered holy by the ones who live there. They also employ jobs as lumberjacks but are careful as to the amount they take. The Treants act as guardian spirits to the forest.) I want the woodcutting game to employ more skill than just walking around. Something that includes skill, such as reflexes or facing a timer.

My current idea is that you have to chop trees when Treants are looking but I'm thinking to expand it a bit more and see what other ideas are out there.

 

[Dalton]

How about having the treants hide between the trees and if you try to chop one of them instead of a tree you lose some lumber.
When the time runs out and you don't have enough lumber you fail.

Make the treants slightly different from the trees. This way the player has to look carefully while being under pressure because time is running out. I imagine this could be quite funny.

 

[Erichermit]

Thank You Dalton. I ended up doing a thing where the Treants patrol the the area and if you are nearby they come after you, so you have to chop whilst keeping an eye out for them.

I like your idea though, If possible I shall use this in a different minigame or little dungeon challenge later. =)