Each player controls a dog. You pick up dog biscuits that are scattered throughout the maze and carry them back to your doghouse for storage. You can also pick up one of three bones floating through the maze. When you launch a bone, it flies through the maze for a few seconds. If it hits your opponent, he is "bumped" around the maze and drops any dog biscuits being carried. The first dog to save 100 biscuits is the winner. 

You can carry no more than 30 biscuits and no more than two bones at any given time. If you lean against a wall when you launch a bone, the bone follows along that wall, turning around corners where necessary to stay along the wall. These are called "wallhugger" bones. 

To download and play the game, go to my Atari 800 Emulator page. 
 

Game Reviews

I consider this my best game. It has the right mix of simplicity and exciting interaction between the players. I was inspired by some other games, including Pac-Man and an Atari 2600-VCS game called Slot Racers by Warren Robinett. I combined different features of these other games, along with some of my own ideas, into a single interactive game. 

The truly innovative and unique feature of this game is the scrolling, splitting, recombining screen. This was entirely my own invention. When the two dogs are fairly close together, they are displayed together in a single scrolling screen. But when they become too far apart to fit in the same screen, the single screen smoothy splits into two independently scrolling screens. When the dogs come back together, the two screens smoothly recombine into a single screen. 

When I completed Bumpomov's Dogs in 1983, it was already long past the peak of the computer game boom, so my marketing efforts were futile. I submitted Bumpomov's Dogs to several mainstream software companies. Most of them threw away my submission, but at least I got a cordial reply from Broderbund Software. Since no one else would accept it, I offered the game for sale through the Atari Program Exchange (APX). It was one of the very last titles they offered before the financial collapse of Atari. The game never earned any royalties. 
 

Special Notice

Have you ever played Bumpomov's Dogs? If so, you can earn a cash prize! Just send me your comments on the game at my guest register page. The first three people to respond will get $2 in cash! Your comments must be detailed enough to prove that you have actually played the game. For example, can you tell me what happens when you get the "reward square" that has a dot inside?