It appears that I’m doing something correct with my uber-cute sheepherding game called Sheeplings: a few days ago I posted my second iteration (version 0.2) on a few message boards, and the response has - all in all - been good. Some things, most notably the graphics, are still not up to par, but the gameplay seems to be pretty appreciated. Yayness!

Appreciated is a relative term, of course. I doubt the addictiveness of Sheeplings, but the majority of the ones who have tested the second version seem to think that it’s enjoyable. That’ll do for me; I’m not going for a hit game - I’m going for good enough. If only the graphics could be improved further. There are very few complaints about the music, and this is something I did not foresee. The case might be that they judge it in comparison with the graphics: since the look isn’t top notch, they don’t expect the music to be any better either. Either way, I’m thankful that my wee tunes aren’t instantly frowned upon.

Here’s a little screenshot in which you can’t see anything:

And here’s the download link in case you want to try the game:

http://www.sheeplings.com/Sheeplings.exe

Please note

• The options cannot be modified yet.
• Only the default profile is present.
• The side quest cannot be solved in the demo.
• User-defined keys aren’t available just yet, but there are three ways of controlling the game: mouse, keyboard and gamepad.
  Keyboard: cursor keys + space
  Gamepad: default 2-axis control + button 1
  No need to select which control to use; you can switch between mouse/keyboard/gamepad at any time.
• If you happen to experience some graphical glitches, would you please try editing the generated profile file (called “Karja”). The attribute “renderer” can be set to 0 or 1 – this indicates whether it prefers to try DirectX or OpenGL first.
• If you don’t want to play through all the levels to gain tokens, you can edit “Karja” and set the “tokens” attribute to anything you wish.

Any feedback is much appreciated!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 21st, 2006 at 12:41 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.