Thinking back I remember spending many hours playing Moorhuhn chasing high-scores. And if you think it is a very simple game than you are totally correct. The game is about nothing else than shooting down as many cartoonish looking “swamp chicken” (German: “Moorhühner”) as possible in 90 seconds.
There are, of course, some challenges to make the gameplay a bit more interesting. The swamp chickens are flying at different heights, and some are farther away than others. The most distant chickens bring the highest score. Besides, there are some other objects on the screen that you can shoot. But be careful, some objects should be avoided. If, for example, you hit the signposts, points will be deducted. But shooting down the top-hat of the scarecrow or the sails of the windmill will give you points.
Controlling the game is as easy as it can get. Just move the crosshair to aim and to scroll left and right through the scenery. You shoot with the left mouse-button and reload with the space-bar.
A bit about History
The Moorhuhn game was developed in 1999 by the Dutch Witan studios and the advertising agency Art Department as an advertisement for the whiskey company Johnnie Walker. The game was not initially intended for distribution but was made available by promoters dressed as hunters in bars for playing on laptops. In 1999 Art Department officially made the game available for download. It became so popular in German-speaking Europe that it was denounced in the media as a threat to business results because of the many hours spent by employees playing the game.
Propelled by the game’s popularity, its Bochum-based publisher Phenomedia AG, who had acquired Art Department, went public in late 1999 at the height of the dot-com bubble and attained a market value of up to one billion euros.
In 2002, the stock value rapidly collapsed after it became known that the company’s leaders were under investigation for falsifying balance sheets. Phenomedia AG underwent insolvency proceedings. Its assets, including the Moorhuhn series, were bought by a successor company, phenomedia publishing GmbH, which continues to publish Moorhuhn games. But now the series is owned by the company AK tronic due to phenomedia going bankrupt. Read more details here on Wikipedia.
Should you be interested in a more realistic shooter game, you might like to try Tom Clancy’s The Division 2.
