Boosters and hazards... almost.

So I have been trying to put together a small system to allow me to add some boosters and environmental hazards to the game. The idea is simple from many games. There's something in the game world that you can "pick up" to boost your abilities or something which will give you an advantage. Similarly to the boosters I want to use the same system to make the game harder if you "pick up" a wrong type of item aka hazards.

Ultimate goal of this change is to add  a little bit of randomness and luck factor. Game as it is now is very unforgiving and hard and I was thinking if there's something player can do (or try to do to improve his/her success rate) it could be less harsh and maybe a bit more casual experience. So, in my mind a booster at the right time could help the player succeed with the last few needles still needed to be shot. While this can't be an automation I think likewise there needs to be balancing "act" and with a wrong hazard simple things can become very hard. What do you think of this?  Do you think this idea is good or bad? Please, leave a comment.

I am currently planning to add the boosters / hazards as flying objects that rotate around the ball. So basically they move with the ball orbiting at certain distance for a short period of time. They rotate counter clockwise to what the ball is rotating and you need to shoot a needle at them to activate one. Since the player is stationary I felt this was pretty natural way to do this. 

Boosters and hazards are spawned at random intervals and types are completely distributed by probability weights. I have not yet started to play with the timings and probabilities as I am still implementing the functionality. But my idea is try to go somewhere around 1-2 boosters per level of play, so you would not be too distracted with them and they would be something of an anticipation moment. I also have to play a bit how long each booster / hazard will be around before it vanishes and how long the effects last. My plan is to make them last for certain amount of seconds so it's a temporary thing before the effect wears off.

I think if I can come up with some discovery element with boosters and hazards it would greatly add to the game play. I could have some pretty rare boosters which by spawning makes you feel great. What do you think of this?

One thing I am having a bit difficulty is to find variety of what kind of boosters and hazards I could add to this type of game. Currently the obvious ones are modifiers to the rotation speed of the ball and horizontal movement speed of the ball. I was also thinking it could be worth trying to add a "double" needle which would allow you to shoot two needles instead of one. Needles would be aligned horizontally so by hitting the ball with a double needle you get 2 hits. This could be great in early phase of the level but probably not so good in late phase where there's very little free ball surface left.

What do you think? What type of boosters and hazards you would add? Please, leave a comment!