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Moon-Buggy
Saved games stay in this browser only.
About the game
Moon-Buggy is a small arcade game that Jochen Voss wrote for text terminals, working on it between 1998 and 2006: you drive a car across the surface of the moon, and the moon, as everyone knows, is full of craters. Piotr Grzybowski contributed the wheel animations. It is free software under the GNU GPL, and it became a fixture of Linux distributions as one of the quick games to play at a console.
The screen is a strip of moon ground that scrolls past, and you stay in the same place on it. Craters of different widths come towards you, and the only thing to do about them is to jump, which takes timing because the jump has a fixed length, and you cannot start a new one until the wheels touch the ground again. Stones fall and land in your way, and you shoot them with the buggy's mining laser before they hit. The levels bring different mixes of obstacles, and each one has its own little title that tells you what to expect, like craters of different widths.
You have a few lives, and the score grows as you pass the obstacles. When the game ends, your score may make the list of the best runs, which the game fills with dwarf names to begin with, so there is always someone to beat.
Playing it here
This is Moon-Buggy 1.0.51, compiled for the browser from its source code, with the original game and rules. The screen is the game's own text screen, and there is no sound. The best scores stay in this browser. The game is in English and needs a keyboard; on a phone or tablet you get big on-screen Jump and Fire buttons.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Space or j | jump |
| a or l | fire the laser |
| q | abort the game |
| r or Ctrl+L | redraw the screen |
| c, w | licence, warranty (on the title screen) |
| s | the scores (on the title screen) |
Tips
Jump early. The jump is always the same length, so start it a little before the edge of the crater, not at it.
Shoot stones before you reach them. The laser is quick; the trick is to fire in time.
Do not hold the keys down. Short presses work better than long ones for the timing.
FAQ
Why are the first names on the score list not real people? The game starts the list with names of dwarves from a fantasy story so that a new player has something to beat.
Where are my scores kept? In this browser, with the other data of this site.