2017-12-04 00:31
Well done!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Sheep without Shepherd
By navot
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 76 | 3.87 | 41 | |
| Fun | 68 | 3.91 | 41 | |
| Innovation | 84 | 3.77 | 40 | |
| Theme | 51 | 4.17 | 41 | |
| Graphics | 81 | 4.02 | 41 | |
| Humor | 259 | 2.97 | 36 | |
| Mood | 167 | 3.42 | 41 |
Well done!
Awesome! I was looking forward to see how yours went. Your game turned out very fun! I'm going to have to look into your Boids implementation as it felt muuuuuch better than mine. I loved the fox mechanic, I wanted to add that as well but ran out of time.
Graphics were really nice too.
The game plays extremely well. I'm just sad I lost my sheep in the forest :(
I love the graphics ! Good job.
Great implementation. It looked great, and the concept was good. Very good job
I love the art style! And that transiction between night and day? Love it! Those foxes gave me anxiety! Good job.
This is a great game! The foxes are a genius idea as they act as a soft time limit, adding urgency to the game. Love the style of the graphics.
I also made a herding game. While its not as good as yours I would love to know what you think of mine.
I saved 266 sheep.
I love how this turned out in the end. The sheep design and day/night cycle work very well. I'm impressed how robustly you implemented the flocking behavior. Controller support is appreciated.
Unfortunately there is no sound at all. Maybe you didn't have enough time but putting together some simple sound effects in bfxr or even recording some voices yourself would have improved the experience immensely.
Overall a short sweet game that feels very polished.
@raziyya I have @cerno-b to thank, because he pushed me on the idea of adding wolves, which I then switched out for foxes, due to their higher nighttime visibility
@cerno-b Thanks again for the continued feedback. Sound isn't really my strength, so I tend to keep pushing it back, until I just submit without any. I should really try to get some sound going earlier next time!
Glad you took my suggestions into account ;)
I also usually put off composing to the last possible moment as I always feel it's the weakest aspect of my games. Sound effects on the other hand are really easy to make using tools like bfxr or chiptone (http://sfbgames.com/chiptone/) Maybe head over there and play around with them to see whether you find something you like?
As for music. I guess even a simple ambient sound is better than silence. It adds so much atmosphere. I think in your case it might have been sufficient to load up any sound tool, get a vst that produces an atmospheric sound and just play really long notes without any real melody, then make the notes fade in and out.
Well made and well done! I like the visual style you chose and the day/night effects not only look awesome but they also give the perfect excuse to introduce more danger/difficulty to the game. I also appreciated how smooth the controls felt. As others have pointed out, sound would have made the game even more enjoyable. Great job!
Good idea, great execution! I like your flocking behaviour.
Really interesting interpretation of the theme! I became so frustrated with the sheep while really impressed with the flock AI systems! At first, I thought they were just moving away from me. However, it's clear they do get guided by you! It took me a while to get a handle on it! Congratulations on finishing the Compo!
Very cool! Well done... made me feel bad when i saw the foxes going after the sheep and then... well, you know... no more sheep.
EXCELLENT GAME!!!!
This was the most enjoyable herding game I've played so far, in terms of game play mechanics and how responsive the controls were. I loved the fact that a seperate element of the game comes at night time, and that you are able to ward off foxes as the sheepdog, as well as direct the sheep. The low poly graphics suited it, and good use of lighting to convery the sun setting. Awesome job, shame there were no baaa noises to make it perfect :D
LOVE the concept. GOOD WORK GUYS!
Really interesting, unique concept and the artstyle is lovely. I don't get how foxes would hurt sheep larger then them, but ok ^^ Just loved seeing the sheep flocking together, it is for some reason really satisfying.
The concept of the game is amazing. One of the bests I saw in this LD. Nice graphics and mechanics. A little laggy in WebGL.
It has the potential to become a bigger game if polished. :clap:
The gameplay feels nicely tuned & intuitive. The graphics looks clean and fairly pleasant but I wish the dog was animated. My score was 272.
I really like the idea. It's original and funny :smile:
That was so much fun I didn't even notice it hadn't any sound until about the third level :smile:
My keys stuck sometimes, but I very much suspect that's the laptops fault, not your game. Also the I got stuck in the fence once, but at that point there was only one sheep left.
Brilliant idea, well implemented and, like the others said, good job on the flocking!
277! Phew. I guess I feel pretty good about that, although there were definitely some casualties along the way!
I remember your crazy asteroid game from a previous LD, and this is another one with an interesting movement/interaction mechanic. At first I got right up next to the sheep but then I realized this disperses them too much. I started to keep a further distance and I found I could corral the sheep better this way. But wowzers that level with 200 of them! It was cool to see the rippling wave of my influence fighting against their natural tendency to have elbow room.
A surprisingly compelling system emerged from very simple rules here, which is a credit to your design. The controls were snappy, the feel fluid, and the art was very nicely done and felt cohesive. It's a shame that there is total silence, as not having any sound makes the game feel less real and further away, whereas all the other elements were strong enough to make a game that could draw me in.
Very well done!
I really like the idea and I think it's a great fit for the theme. The herding mechanic, in particular the responsiveness of the sheep, works very well. You are definitely engaged as a player and are driven to herd all of the sheep before time runs out. The game looks pretty good, though some animation for the dog would be nice. I like the transition to night, as it looks good and it gives a visual indicator that you are running out of time. The foxes as an additional threat are good too, as you really feel under pressure. Some way of neutralising the foxes might be a good addition if you add harder levels though.
The keyboard controls I found a little frustrating, the dog controls more like a car than an animal with its wide turning circle. Seeing one of the other comments that you could use a controller, I tried that instead and found it much more intuitive to control with an analogue stick. I can't see it stated anywhere that controllers are supported, so you might wanted to publicise that fact a bit more. It's a real shame there is no sound, just a "woof" and a "bah" noise would have really added to this and even injected some humour too.
What man (sheep dog), if he has 100 sheep and one gets lost, will not go after the one? Haha, that felt appropriate somehow. Anyway, I reeally liked the sheep mechanics. At first it seems overly simple, but as others have pointed out, the sheep will kind of assemble, then spread out for 'elbow room,' or they have a personal bubble. Their movement is a little bit complicated, which is nice! I was happy to see you could scare away the foxes also.
I only have a couple things: the HTML5 seemed a bit laggy on controls, and I wanted some sort of new element to be added, I dunno, like maybe a run/fatigue system. But those are minor, this is really a unique idea, well done, and great art! Nice work!
This game caught my interest, because our game is also a shepherding game. Great stuff, you did a good job on the shepherding and flocking mechanics to make the game interesting. Once the foxes are in, gameplay becomes rather random, as the sheep run away from the foxes. Maybe it's good if the dog also scares away foxes. The nightfall shadow effect is nice. Why not make the shadows appear more slowly, so they indicate how much time is left?
Nice herd simulation + simple and effective graphics = fun to play. (I saved 263 sheep.)