About Bunny Hop Checkers
Bunny Hop Checkers is the classic board game of checkers, also called draughts, played on a picnic board in a clover meadow. You move the cream bunnies from the bottom of the board; Nutmeg the squirrel plays the russet squirrels from the top. Every piece is a round checker with a face, and it really hops from square to square.
Play against Nutmeg on Easy, Medium or Hard, or switch to 2 Players and share one screen. The rules are standard American checkers: an 8×8 board and 12 pieces a side.
How to play
- Pieces live on the green squares. A bunny hops one square diagonally forward onto an empty square. Tap a bunny and its landing spots glow.
- Capture a squirrel by jumping over it onto the empty square right behind it. If the same bunny can jump again from where it lands, it must keep going. Jumps are mandatory: when one is waiting, the pieces that can jump get a pulsing amber ring and nothing else may move.
- A bunny that reaches the far row is crowned a king. Kings wear a gold crown and can hop and jump backwards as well as forwards.
- You win when the other side has no pieces left or cannot move. A match is a draw if the same position comes up three times, or after 40 moves each without a capture or a move by an uncrowned piece.
- On Easy a capture scores 10, then 20 and 30 for the next jumps of the same move; a crowning scores 30; a win scores 200 plus 20 for every bunny you still have, and a draw scores 50. Medium doubles every point and Hard triples it.
- You have three hearts. Losing a match, or giving one up after your first move, costs a heart; winning gives one back. The game ends when the last heart is gone. In 2 Players there are no hearts and no score.
Controls
- Keyboard
- Click a bunny, then a glowing spot, or drag the bunny there. The arrow keys move a cursor and Space or Enter picks a piece, then its landing square. U takes back your last move, H shows a hint and N starts a new match.
- Touch
- Tap a bunny, then a glowing spot, or drag it there. In a multi-jump, tap each landing spot in turn. Undo, Hint and New sit by the board; the button next to the hearts switches between Easy, Medium, Hard and 2 Players.
Tips
- Keep the bunnies on your back row at home as long as you can: a squirrel cannot be crowned while those squares are full.
- Before every move, check whether the square you leave lets a squirrel jump. A bunny with a friend right behind it cannot be jumped.
- Because jumps are mandatory, you can offer one bunny to pull a squirrel out of place and take two in return.
- You get three undos and three hints per match: save them for the moment a double jump appears against you.
