Mop 'n' Bop Guide
Written by Nergye
Ok. Mop 'n' Bop is, basically, a pretty easy game. All you need is an hour or so
spare, enough patience to keep going for a big score, and more practically, the
ability to work out the relative speeds of the different petpets. I'll come back
to that.
The basic premise of the game is this: You are playing as the Yurble Janitor
from the Altador plot-line. You are wandering round the Altador Hall Of Heroes,
trying to keep the floor clean, but a load of dirty petpets are walking round in
the other direction, messing it up as quickly as you can clean it. Most people
would give it up as a bad job, put up a sign saying that the Hall Of Heroes is
closed, and THEN clean it, but not out trusty Yurble. He's dedicated.
There are 5 different types of petpet which come into the Hall to ruin the
Janitor's day. Minitheus turns up on the first lap of the Hall: He walks slowly,
and doesn't need much cleaning at all; Altachucks appear next, on the second
lap: They're a little faster, and need more cleaning; Alabriss comes next; Then
Vaeolus and Altalaphus. The pattern of getting faster and harder to clean
completely continues predictably, the hardest being Altalaphus.
So that's the basics. Now for the important part: How to actually play the game!
You hold down the left mouse button (LMB) to charge up your Yurble to swing his
mop round like a lunatic, hitting any nearby petpets and cleaning them in the
process. The longer you hold the LMB down for, the more cleaning your mop will
do when it hits a petpet - there's a bar at the top-left of the game screen
showing how charged-up your mop is. When that's full, you're at the maximum
cleaning potential. Well done. When you're ready to swipe at a petpet, and
there's one (or more) in range, just let go of the LMB, and your faithful Yurble
will do his thing. After that, you'll want to press the LMB down to start
charging up again - in fact, press it again as soon as you let go to hit a
petpet, or you'll waste valuable time.
In later levels, there'll be a mix of different petpet types on screen at the
same time. Since they all travel at different speeds, you'll need to learn to
see how close they'll be to each other when they get to the left of the screen.
This is because, in general, you want to hit as many petpets with each swipe as
you can. Learn the size of the area you cover when you wave your mop, and the
relative speeds of petpets, and you shouldn't ever have any trouble with this
game.
But there are other matters to consider. For the first 5 laps of the Hall, you
get a mop upgrade each lap, but it's not automatic. You have to press SHIFT
during the game, which pauses, and brings up your mop menu. On this, you can
choose to upgrade either the mop head, or the handle. Simplified, this means:
upgrading the head improves the cleaning, upgrading the handle improves the
speed for your mop to charge up. After upgrading both twice, you get to choose
from several types or head and handle. I would recommend the middle handle, and
the leftmost head. It'd take too long to explain, but feel free to experiment
with different ones, and see what combination best suits your style of play.
There are also pickups throughout the game. There are 4 different ones: A
feather, a golden orb, an explosion, and a coin. (I must point out, this is just
what they look like to me. I have no idea what they're meant to be!) The ones
that matter are the feather and the coin. The feather speeds the Janitor up,
both his walking speed and the charging speed of his mop - this is the most
important thing in the game, in my opinion. The coin gives you an extra 50
points, which is important if you're going for a high score. The other two, I'm
not even certain what they do, but it might as well be nothing, to be honest!
However, the pickups are random, but there can only be one of each on screen at
a time. As such, try to pick up feathers and coins quickly, (ie, before hitting
petpets, if you have a choice) but try to delay before getting the other two, so
that if any petpets drop pickups, they'll be feathers or coins, not the others.
Neat trick, eh?
Another quick point: The higher level petpets (like Vaeolus and Altalaphus) drop
pickups more often than the lower level ones (Minitheus and Altachuck). Just
something else to bear in mind, if you didn't have enough already!
There are advanced tactics too, but I should really leave you something to work
out for yourselves, shouldn't I!
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