One of my proudest achievements — I was a part of the creation of a video game!
This is the title illustration artwork for the game, and was drawn by me!
This year, Game Maker’s Toolkit hosted a Game Jam, and from July 22nd to July 26th me, my husband, and our two good friends Currents and DillUp worked together to create a game (available to play in-browser on itch.io). It’s called “Sheep Down” and it’s all about a farmer protecting his flock of sheep from a variety of predators that attempt to snatch them up. This farmer and his sheep are unique, though — not only can the sheep be launched as projectiles to knock predators away for good, the sheep carry on unflinchingly after being launched in this way. Talk about some tough sheep! The farmer also has one more tool in his arsenal, and that’s his sheep-herding cane. Unlike its traditional use, this farmer channels the ability to use the cane offensively and can stun the predators completely still for a few seconds. During this time, they are vulnerable to being stunned once more in the same fashion, or the sheep launch attack I mentioned earlier.
There are a variety of predators that can appear to take sheep from the farmer. Wolves and dire wolves attempt to run to, grab, and drag sheep off screen. If it’s a wolf that has a sheep, the sheep has a decent chance of breaking free, but if it’s a dire wolf, the sheep cannot kick to escape. Another thing about dire wolves — they have two health bar indicators, which means they need two sheep launch attacks to fly off-screen for good, unlike their wolf counterparts, who will be launched off with only a single hit.
There is also a bird that can appear, and it will locate a sheep and attempt to dive to grab it up. As the screenshot below shows, there’s a rectangular indicator of where the bird will attempt the pick up a sheep. If it succeeds, and you do not hit it when it’s close to the ground (during this time, you can either stun or launch a sheep at the bird), it will not be able to be hit once it regains its altitude.
In this screenshot, you can see several wolves, and a bird. The bird sprite is incredible, and looks like a legendary animal to me. It was made by my wonderful husband!
The last predator in the game is a snake. It appears from underground, and it’s particularly tough, because if a sheep happens to run over to it this enemy will simply pick it up immediately and the sheep is gone for good.
Now, the sheep in this game have a lot to them. First off, they have hats! Secondly, they have unique names that are sometimes randomly generated with titles. Thirdly, if a sheep survives the predators for a day, they earn a special ribbon that’s pinned to them to signify this achievement. Any particular sheep, hat, name, title, ribbon and all, will persist through an entire play-through if not taken by a predator. Our friend Currents, who alone did much of the programming of the game (with some help from Abidaboo as well as DillUp), and provided the initial art assets that launched the beginning of the entire project, took so much care in creating the behavioral programming behind the sheep and predator behavior. He also wrote a wonderful dev blog about his work, which I highly recommend reading!
A sheep hat, specifically, an aviator cap. This sheep is much, much cooler than me.
I created a lot of the art assets in this game, and I’m proud of what I was able to create as pixel art! I created the artwork for: the farmer and his weapon, the sheep, the wolves, the snakes, a fair few of the hats, the trees, and the initial art for the grass.
Abidaboo, my husband, created the artwork for: my personal favorite hat, the wizard hat (seen in the title artwork), the cone hat, and the bird.
Currents created the artwork for: the initial artwork for the sheep and wolf (which heavily inspired my artwork for them), the sign signifying “no sheep” in the house, the final artwork for the grass, and some of the hats including the party hats for the sheep. He also decided on the font choices for the game.
DillUp created the artwork for: The farmer’s house, the fences, the logs you see scattered on the ground, and the rocks on the ground as well.
Here, you can view a clip of Currents playing Sheep Down!
You can play Sheep Down for free if you’d like to give it a shot. The instructions to play are on the screen! If you do end up playing the game, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment to let us know what you thought of it.