Polish is everything when you expect to sell a game. I have no idea how you expect to sell a hangman game, but if anyone would ever buy a hangman game, then it better look damn good.
You aren't looking at the big picture. If you take an old game like hangman, you have to make it new, you have to make it worthwhile. You could easily smarten up the graphics, but you have the problem that your using VB, so unless you want to use an external graphics API, it will always have that VB look. VB is the completely wrong language to write games in.
I would suggest the following, however I'm not sure how you'll take this - I see it as a reality check...
* Stop using VB. Start learning DBPro.
* Make a word based educational game, so Hangman, maybe some crossword, wordsearch, boggle... lots of options. Nobody will pay money for hangman, ever - but a well presented educational game about words might do quite well.
* Graphics. Your stick man should be some sort of character, maybe hanging the poor git is a bad idea too - what if you had a pirate walking the plank instead. Has to be bright and child friendly. I added 2 cheeky monkey characters to my current project, and it's a completely different, vibrant and fun game because of it.
* Stop worrying about wordcounts. 60,000 words is plenty. I wrote a typing tutor game a while ago, and spent a long time filtering out inappropriate words, and ended up with about 48,000.
* Pretend that you freakin love words, you have to engage your audience and the people who decide what your audience get to buy.
* Consider netbooks - lots of kids have netbooks, maybe 1024x600 is a good resolution for your game.
* Sound. Things like playing a typewriter sound when a key is pressed can make a big difference.
You might have to get an artist on board, but that's something you have to consider, along with the direction you should take your game. The main thing is that game programming is very different to application programming. DBPro is procedural, so rather than designing a form, you'd load in graphics and place them on the screen. The actual logic in the game wouldn't change much, but it's hangman, the bulk of any hangman game should be code that makes it look better than just a hangman game. When a kid get's a word correct - they should see fireworks and sparkles and cool stuff happening. They need to see something cool, and need to want to see that again, otherwise they might as well watch TV.
I think the main thing is to give your target market some credit, don't assume anything about them, polish your game as much as you can stand or are able to do - graphics can be straightforward but they need to be charming at least. Minecraft was mentioned.... Minecraft with it's cute piggies, birds, cows, dogs and all that personality. Minecraft is a fascinating game for kids to even watch someone else play, people need to stop using Minecraft as an excuse for their poor visuals, it's just embarrasing.
We are a very mixed community here, some critique might sound harsh but remember that we are mostly in the same boat - trying to make games that people play, either for fun or financial gain. Harsh advice is the most useful at the end of the day, we respect people here who can take advice and critique and are prepared to learn and improve.
Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
