Mop 'n' Bop

Introduction

Our favorite Yurble is back, as janitor for the Hall of Heroes. Unfortunately, endless numbers of dirty petpets have taken to wandering through the hall, leaving mud trails behind them. Your job is to keep the floors clean and shiny as well as cleaning up any pets that get within range of your mop.

Controls & Instructions

You only need one thing to control this game, your left mouse button (that's right, if you're right mouse button is MIA for any reason, you can still play this game). The janitor will constantly hold his mop on the ground to clean up all the footprints, so all you need to worry about are the petpets. In order to clean them, hold down your left mouse button until the power bar fills up and release when the petpet is right in front of you. If you're a bit off, don't worry, you'll still clean the petpet.

There are five different petpets that will show up in the game, they range from slowest to fastest, left to right. Hover your mouse over the images to see their names and the amount of points you receive for cleaning them.

The last two petpets can make the game rather difficult, so be prepared. They don't only give you a smaller window to hit them in, but they give you less time to get full power and come up right behind a slower petpet, giving you no time to power up.

If you let too many pets past you that haven't been cleaned well enough, your dirt meter will begin to fill up. If it reaches the top, you lose! Luckily, you can make the meter go back down if you clean up the missed dirt when you pass over it on your next lap.

Upgrades

Each time you complete a lap of the hall (ie go up a level), you'll unlock upgrades for your mop. Its really easy to get upgrades, but easier to forget about them. When you have an upgrade available, the icon will glow and you will hear a sound, though its easy to miss so watch for the glowing. To open the upgrades panel, press shift or click on the mop icon at the top of your screen. Be sure to upgrade your mop head first, you'll need it to be able to fully clean the faster petpets. Check out the table below for a list of all the upgrades.

Power ups

There are three main power ups in this game, you don't need to worry about anything though, they pop out of some petpets after you clean them and when you get to them, their effect happens immediately. They're unavoidable, but luckily they all have good effects.

Another "power up" in this game is the water bucket. While you are walking through the hall, you will come across water droplets which you collect and put into your water bucket (it just works, okay). When your bucket has some water in it, press your space bar, or click on the bucket icon to throw the water at everything in front of you. The more water in the bucket, the cleaner the petpets will get. This is very useful for large groups of petpets that you start encountering around your third lap.

Tips & Strategies

There is one main strategy to do well in this game, keep your power charged up. Always be holding down the mouse button, only release it when a petpet is right in front of you, to clean it, and then go back to holding down the button. Also, if there are two petpets coming fairly close to each other, wait until the first petpet is right behind you and the second is right in front of you, since the mop spins around, you'll get both petpets at once. If the petpets are too far apart for that, use your bucket of water to clean them off and swing at them as best you can to get the most points.

As for upgrades, always upgrade your mop head first, that way it takes less power to clean the petpets, in case you weren't able to get to full power. I tend to use the balanced head and handle, but choose which one is best for you, depending on your playing style. If you have good timing, go for the head with the smaller hit area etc. As you progress further into the game, you'll find that the faster head and handle will serve you best. Also, if you need to pause your game, just press shift to open the upgrade menu and come back later!

Conclusion

Mop 'n' Bop is, in my opinion, a very original game idea and very well done. The upgrades and power ups are a very good addition to stop the game from getting boring too fast. If you can get all the upgrades, you've gotten, or are very close to getting enough points to send a score of 1000 NP, which is not very hard to accomplish. All in all, this game gets a 10 out of 10 for originality, creativity, and gives-you-a-lot-of-neopoints-ity, a game you should definitely play