Hillbilly Hillbert

Life on the farm’s never been easy – or so I’ve heard from the various farmers I’ve ever come across (and yes, I’ve spoke to a few). That being said however, it’s not often you’ll ever quite see a farm quite like the one Hillbilly Hillbert has to offer you.

What you must do is use the up, down, left and right buttons on the d-pad or the corresponding keys on the keypad to move your character, Hillbert, around the terrain. As you move around the grid, you turn the field from brown to green and when you’ve managed to convert all the grid squares green you complete the level.

To make this more of a challenge you must try to avoid the pesky frogs and thunder clouds (or more to the point the lightning bolts) as you go around the grid. If you get hit by either the frog or bolt, you lose a life. To help make this challenge a little of an even fight, you have the use of a couple of hot air balloons at the side of ‘field’ which if you grab, will lift you to the top of the screen and away from the frogs which will follow you.

The game rewards you by giving you points for every field square you convert, and when you manage to get 10,000 points, you’ll be rewarded with an extra life.

For those of you old enough to remember the classic game of Qbert, you’ll see an instant resemblance here. The grid is identical, the only things that change are the obstacles and the graphics have been radically improved from the basic (and rather trippy) colour scheme.

This game has a rather appealing and addictive nature due to the simplicity yet the random and tricky movements you have to do to avoid the ever increasing number of frogs and storm clouds which seem to have it in for you whilst you’re just going about your business. The fun this game gives you is actually pretty high as you will receive quite a large amount of satisfaction in knowing you’ve managed to use your wits, reaction and two balloon ‘lifelines’ just in case to keep yourself one step ahead of the competition.

If there’s anything a little disappointing about this game, I’d have to say it’s the lack of different level layouts. As far as I can tell, there only is the one design, but with the frogs and clouds increasing in their ferocity, the layout (or lack of new ones), doesn’t tend to matter one bit, and in fact, it’s a bit of a relief with so much going on in the game.

Ultimately then, this game gives you a good action-come-puzzle combo which will keep your fingers twitching in a blur for several hours.

Rating 75%

Positives

Classic retro game in a new twist

Lots of hours of fun and easy to get to grips with

Neat and sharp graphics

Negatives

Lack of creativity with the level designs

Repetitive but oddly this doesn’t detract from its appeal