Hover Bovver is a 1983 labyrinth game written by Jeff Minter released for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit families. Like many other Minter games, it's famous for its unusual sense of humor. The background music is based on Percy Grainger's people's tone of Country Gardens . It's set by James Lisney.
Video Hover Bovver
Story
The purpose of the game is to mow the lawn (using a neighboring mower) while avoiding static obstacles - the flower plot - and the enemy that moves - the neighbor itself. Your pet dog will be hostile to a neighbor and keep it away from you, but because the dog itself is vulnerable to a lawn mower, you have to be careful not to run it.
Maps Hover Bovver
Gameplay
Players control their lawn mowers with joysticks, and are required to cut every square of grass on the screen. The mower is very slow at first, but accelerates quickly if the joystick is held in one direction, encouraging the player to optimize the route to include as many straight and long lines as possible.
Players are chased by "neighbors," enemies who are always moving directly toward the players. If caught by a neighbor, the player loses his life, though this is represented as a neighbor taking the mower away (it becomes, in fact, a neighboring property) and the player has to borrow a cutting machine from someone else. The remaining player's life is shown by the name of the neighbor from whom the current cutting machine has been borrowed: Jim, Tom and finally Alf.
As well as grass, the board includes blocking space where the mower can not be moved, and flowers. Cutting flowers produces a second enemy, the gardener, appearing who chases the player in the same way as the neighbors. Unlike the neighbors, gardeners will not walk on the existing flower beds. Moving the cutting machine too quickly results in an improved cutter mower; if it reaches maximum, the cutting machine will stop moving until the gauge descends back to a certain level. This usually causes the player to be captured by a neighbor or a gardener.
The only weapon players are their dogs. By pressing the fire button, the player can set the dog in the neighbor or the gardener. This causes them to run or freeze in place. The amount of time this can be done is limited (shown as Dog Loyalty meters). Dogs also remain active, wandering randomly on the board even when not used to attack. A Dog Tolerance meter slowly descends, representing the time limit. Once this reaches zero, the dog starts attacking the cutting machine, causing the heat too quickly if he successfully bites it. If Dog Loyalty persists, the dog can be disturbed from attacking the mower by ordering it to attack neighbors or gardeners instead. Also, if the mower collides with the dog, the Dog Tolerance meter immediately goes down to zero.
Windows Port
In 2002, Idigicon released a PC version with the Kool Dog label. This version is not programmed by Jeff Minter and introduces a number of game elements that many fans consider unwanted: in particular, the grass is made for scrolling and slow start motion from the lawn mower and then the acceleration is not at all as uttered. The player had 5 lives instead of 3, and the names of the people from which the cutting machine was taken were changed for those involved in game development: they included George (George Bray, Producer on Idigicon at the time), and Jeff (Jeff Minter ).
Sequel
In 2002 Minter released the sequel, Hover Bovver 2 , for Windows and PocketPC platforms. It introduces a number of new features:
- The speed of the gardener increases with the number of flowers being pruned. If all interest on the board is trimmed, "the police" appear to pursue the player - five very fast enemies who are immune to dogs. Completing the level with active police is almost impossible but, if achieved, earn very many points.
- Dog Tolerance declines much more slowly, and crashing dogs with cutting machines no longer drops Dog Tolerance to zero; on the contrary, it causes the "vet" to appear, the enemy behaves like the others but is immune to dog attacks.
- The player again has five lives, not three: cutting machines given by Jim, Tom, and Alf (as in the original game) followed by "Former Queen Flunky's Mother" and Yak.
- The dog occasionally defecates in the yard. Players can prevent dogs from doing this by spending Loyalty. If allowed to continue, the resulting dog mess will slow down the cutting machine if the player collides with it, but it will also freeze the enemy that has collided with it for long periods of time.
- "Dog toys" can be collected, which, if collected and thrown into the dog, will increase the remaining Loyalty and Tolerance at the expense of players who can not use dogs for a certain period of time.
- Some levels display "weed killers" which, when collected, will gradually destroy all the flowers at that level, leading to gardens and police appearing. Levels of weed killer killers tend to be very short and panic.
- Sheep will gradually appear to help the player in mowing the lawn by eating grass.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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