For years and years I have been writing small games and programs as a hobby. It all started when I received a C64; after a few weeks of playing games, my perceptive family got me a book on graphics and game programming. I was instantly hooked. The Amiga soon followed, and when I attended high scool I saved up to buy my neighbour’s 486 PC. Granted, I was mostly interested in using it for making music (can you imagine the possibilities when you go from 1MB RAM to 4MB?), but assembly programming was also a great treat. In 1998 I finally got myself a decent PC, and that’s when my Windows adventures started.

I could go on with my nostalgia, and mention old game projects: Time Fighters, the Wolverine game, Shit Invaders, Mega Brain Splashing 1 to 4, the Star Wars game, my GBA emulator, Satan Claus, Spank da Virgin – and so on. But that’s a story for another day. Instead, I’m going to mention my latest game project: Sheeplings.

Last year, I was interested in making a game engine, and posted a question about that project on the Indiegamer forums. Mildly heated discussions emerged, and I felt that many didn’t understand that I didn’t care about the faulty logic of developing a new engine when there are many others already available; I simply wanted a hobby project to waste my time on. But something good came from that discussion: I got inspired by their professional view, and started wondering what it would be like to produce something of interest to the general public – not just a game for my own amusement.

I abandoned my self-made OpenGL-powered engine, and started experimenting with BlitzMax for productivity reasons. I decided to outsource the graphics as much as possible. And I decided to make a game with ultra-cute and fluffy sheep. Enter Sheeplings.

If you feel inclined, click on any of these images to see screenshots of the development version of the game:

The premise is extremely simple: you play the part of the sheepdog, and you have the awesome power of…barking. You can bark to scare sheep, in order to get them where you want; that is the main idea of the gameplay.

The screenshots above show only extremely simple guide-the-sheep-to-some-area levels, intended as introduction for the fresh would-be-shepherd. Later on, eagles will soar menacingly overhead, and you have to make sure that your sheep stay alive. Wolves will of course also make an entrance, as well as other adversaries. I hope to put together a complete demo of the game as soon as possible, but until then I just might rant about all my fluffy sheep here instead.

Sheeplings status:

• Finished levels: 12 out of an unknown amount
• Main gameplay: 80%
• Graphical effects: 60% (More sparkling thingies are needed)
• Title screen: 30% (No-one gets to see the current one; it needs to be re-done)
• Map screen: 50% (But no graphics for it yet)
• Music: 30% (Songs are present but I need to work more on them)
• Sound effects: 10% (Mostly place-holder effects are present now)

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Indie Games, Sheeplings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.