Sky Shepherd by Teto
Delay the inevitable thunderstorm whilst collecting cloud wool!
Share your high scores with us!
CONTROLS
Rotate the sheep pen using the left and right arrows keys or the on-screen buttons.
Connect 4 or more sheep on the bottom row to shear them and collect wool. More sheep or more consecutive rows = bigger combo multiplier!
Click the ? in the top right of the game for more info.
OVERVIEW
Fussy cloud sheep keep entering the pen but won't leave for shearing without their friends.
Clear the sheep pen to collect cloud wool and keep the sheep happy.
Unhappy, crowded cloud sheep will cause a mighty thunderstorm!
DEVELOPMENT
Code and SFX by @ciaranw . Graphics and music by @teto .
A chill two and a half days jam for us this time (with full nights of sleep!) due to holidays and work. We made sure to go for something super simple to avoid having a complete mental breakdown... We were't sure whether to participate since we were busy but managed to come up with a concept within 30 minutes of seeing the theme on Saturday morning so here we are!
Development this jam was actually very smooth unlike previous jams. Given the simple nature of the game, we were able to add much more polish and extra features to give the game a completed feeling. We were even able to add a whole extra gameplay easter egg so good luck finding that! For the first time, we didn't need to cut any content and actually stopped for proper meals in between development!
We were able to put more time to music and sfx where we discovered my inability to make music and Ciaran's ability to mimic a sheep with disturbing accuracy.
The extra time we had may have gotten lost on Sunday evening when the gameplay came together. We did some very extensive play-testing having gotten somewhat distracted/addicted... Made that time back up after work on Monday pulling the last bits together and finally linking my hidden feature at the very last minute.
Overall, we really enjoyed taking it chill this time and made a much more polished game as a result. We hope you enjoy it too!
TOOLS
Engine: Godot
Graphics: Krita
Audio: Soundtrap/Audacity
DEVELOPER HIGH SCORES
Ciaran: 11,334
Teto: 23,372
Post release changelog:
- Remove restart button from secret screen
- Reduce secret frequency
- Fix music restarting incorrectly on game restart
- High score now lasts across page refresh
THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!
| Link | https://ciaranw.itch.io/sky-shepherd |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/sky-shepherd |
Ratings
| Overall | 425th | 3.729⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 326th | 3.708⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 165th | 3.86⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 915th | 3.46⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 779th | 3.542⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 80th | 4.125⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 608th | 3.065⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 495th | 3.667⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 25🗨️ |
Maybe in future, if we decide to work more on it, we will add different abilities/power ups and maybe different types of sheep that interact differently to spice up the gameplay a bit!
The music was great and the idea is very original.
Well done! :thumbsup:
@cookie-chr That's impressive! I spent many hours on Tuesday playing instead of working (oops) to get my high score so well done!
Thank you all!
Although I was bit confused when sheeps are collected.. at least until I found the ? icon ;)
I have to confess, I initially thought the objective was to match sheep by colour - but as far as I can tell the colour doesn't make much difference. I did see there's a help menu that explains this, but I didn't find it until after my first round. I think I was expecting to see the instructions on the start page, so I didn't think to look for it.
Either way, I really enjoyed it!
@animawish We do plan to do a bit more work on this and maybe release it! We have said that about one of our games before and never did but that would have required much more work so we're optimistic about this one!
*Edit: Apart from the king sheep if that counts :eyes:
I'll give some extra nitpicky feedback since I feel like this game could be rad if polished a bit more and released (especially on mobile). I wasn't totally sure what the sheep colors were for, and it took me a bit to recognize that four-of-a-kind on the floor was what was causing my sheep to disappear. I didn't need much tutorial since the game explains itself well as you play, but a little more feedback highlighting that could be useful. And this is SUPER nitpicky, but making the "Restart" and "Music" buttons larger while keeping their text sizes the same will likely make them look more polished.
Overall, awesome job! :D
@roolow Thank you! I think we might work on balancing and difficulty scaling if we release it as I agree it's quite easy at first then it gets to a point where it almost forces you to lose.
@knipsch Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! I love nitpicky things since they're always things we probably don't notice as the creator. We would have liked to put the info/help screen up when you click start rather than just in the corner but didn't get time to hook that up. The point about the buttons is really helpful! I always struggle with making UI look half decent and not just boxes so will definitely keep that in mind for the next one! Also, sheep colour didn't make a difference, just thought it might make it clearer to separate pieces a bit like in tetris.