melbourne news updates: Android Quick App: Sheep at Stake

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Android Quick App: Sheep at Stake

Our latest gaming excursion from the fellow who brought us Magic Cuts is Sheep at Stake, a cutesy, colorful game that hides its insane difficulty under a facade of an adorable flock of sheep.

Sheep at Stake's whole purpose is to stretch your abilities of multitasking to the point of breakage, demanding you do more and more complex tasks simultaneously lest you let your sheep go astray. Lose three sheep in a level and it's game over. You can track your progress till a level ends by looking at the orange bar at the top of the screen. The more sheep that successfully reach their destination, the more the bar fills up. Once it's filled, you've won the level. You're awarded a star for every sheep not lost (to a maximum of three).

Gameplay takes place over four levels and three unique environments. There's also three levels of difficulty, ranging from easy, to normal, to difficult. That being said, I can't even fathom how hard difficult is, based on what I experienced on the easy mode.

Sheep at Stake has a great premise, but it's not without it's shortcomings. Frankly, the learning curve is a bit too steep too early on. With so many levels ahead of you and four environments each, I think there could have been a bit more gradual ramping up of the challenges, to ease the player into some of the harder puzzles.

That being said, the game also does a lot of things well. The music is nice as are the sound effects and the game runs smooth. It's colorful and nice, and the cartoonish sheep are always fun to look at. It's solidly built, even if it's too much too soon.

Overall, Sheep at Stake seems like the kind of game only a glut for punishment would enjoy. Fortunately for everyone else, it's free, so you're not out anything if you realize it's a bit more than you bargained for. If you're up to test your multitasking or just need to kill some time (even if, like me, you can't pass Level 3), Sheep at Stake is at least worth a gander.

A few more pictures and download links are after the break.