Rolling in the Sheepe

The Sheepe are a simple folk. They are born with a random shape and one burning desire in their woolly heart: cross the finish line before the others!

When they take their first rolls, though, they soon find out not every shape is equally suited for rolling. And in a weird twist of faith, the player in last place magically turns into a wolf that eats the others!

Rolling in the Sheepe is a simple, light-hearted local multiplayer game for 1-6 players of all ages. 

Roll your sheepe to the finish. Try not to get sliced into many tinier sheepe along the way, or become The Unrollable Triangle, or land on a spike, or miss that jump ten times, or - well, you know, just try to roll better than the others?

This game is playable on Windows / Mac / Linux with both Controllers & Keyboard. (In any combination. Four keyboard players at most.)

Each player only has two buttons: roll left and roll right. Rolling was never easier!

Of course, for the really tricky bleaters among us, you can do more than roll. 

Press both buttons to do a quick jump. Hold both buttons to float in the air. 

Many of the terrains play with your physics, such as the reverse gravity or the spiderman that clings to walls.

For this game, I tried a new method to make learning the game easier. When the game boots, you have only two options:

• A tutorial mode. When chosen, you play a special course designed to teach the basic buttons and objective, but nothing else.
• A free play mode. Anything can appear. But, before a new thing is added, a tutorial image also appears (right inside the level) that explains what's coming. 

This way, you only need to play the tutorial once. Then you can free play, without requiring any upfront reading/learning, but it will be different every time and use all content of the game!

If you did (not) like this system, let me know! It's something I experiment with. (Any other feedback is also greatly appreciated.)

Additionally, the game has several mechanics to bring players closer together.  The most important ones are ...

Locks: a minigame that the player(s) in the lead must solve before they can continue. They aren't just a catch-up trick, they are a core part of the game and a challenge by itself!

Teleports: if you're too far behind, or did not move for too long, you're teleported forward. This does incur a time penalty though, so even if you reach the finish first, you might not necessarily have the best time!

This game has:

• 25 terrains. (While moving over them, their effect is active on you.)
• 20 locks. (See explanation above.)
• 40 obstacles. (Solid tiles can have obstacles on them, such as deadly spikes or trampolines.)

There is a free demo to try the game. It has no restrictions, but only includes a handful of the elements, meaning the same things will appear each run.

The game started as part of my "One Week Game" series. 

But it became way bigger (and much different) than I originally imagined. And so I ended up working on it way longer, and eventually decided to become serious about it and bring the game to a paid release.

(Also, the original core idea ended up not fitting with my other ideas, so I had to redo the whole project from scratch. That original core idea eventually became Carving Pumpkins & Dwarfing Dumplings.)

You can read about the whole development in my (extremely long and detailed) devlog: [Devlog] Rolling in the Sheepe

The summary? It was hard, physics are annoying, it became harder, and finally I just decided to finish what I had before I'd quit entirely in frustration. I'm proud of what it is and think you'll have great fun with it, but it's not for everyone, and could be more polished.

I know, that's not smart to say in terms of marketing, but it's the truth. Game development is hard, I'm still learning :)