Sheepy: A Short Adventure (2024)

I don't know who MrSuicideSheep is. I played this because Steam recommended it, the reviews are "overwhelmingly positive," and it's free.

Sheepy's intro and credits emphasize its music above all else, and the soundtrack is good. I don't know that it would have stood out to me if it didn't get top billing, but it synchronizes well with player actions and heightens the emotion of bigger set pieces.

It's clear from Steam's community content that the world and its lore are also a big draw. These certainly elevate the game from "fun platformer" to something grander, and I had fun stumbling on various fragments along the way. But the substance of the story borrows a lot from pretty well-worn tropes: I appreciate it more as a vehicle for exploration and collectables than any particular narrative payoff.

What I found really impressive were Sheepy's visuals and controls.

A lot of games try combining retro pixel art and animation with more modern effects, but that balance can be really tricky. Sheepy makes it look easy, with beautiful, fluid sprites and beautiful use of environment, lighting and camera.

Traversing the game is a treat. Your basic jump is just shallow enough to make your first upgrade really impactful, but not so much to make movement frustrating. And the final two powers are super satisfying, with levels that provide plenty of runway to push them to their fullest. (I was initially intimidated by the game's boss battles since the rest is combat-free, but once you identify the patterns, they're really quite forgiving.)

It's a little buggy: I switched from Steam Deck to PC, and even there I had to tweak some Steam Input settings to get it to acknowledge my Xbox One controller, and it still switched to displaying keyboard inputs partway through. But this is an astounding achievement for a rather new artist-developer (who really deserved top billing, IMO).

I'm not sure I get it.

This is a perfectly fine short and free platforming game with excellent music (of course, it comes from the mind of music youtuber MrSuicideSheep) and great atmosphere. At first I thought this was just a conceptual experiment and It would have been great that way... but then there's some kind of a plot and it lost me completely.

This is a game about a sheep plushie that gets possesed by an strange energy (so far so good) and must travel through underground caves full of ruins, mysterious sights and a killer teddy bear (still fine). But then you find ""THE LORE"" about a corporation trying to exploit whaterver is found on those ruins and then it falls apart.

I'm the first one to love an anticapitalist narrative, but it gives "too much form" to a weird concept, gives expectations and a need for a more traditional narrative that the game cannot give. From that point on, nothing makes sense, not even in its own surreal way.

Maybe I missed something? Maybe I should watch some youtuber that uncover a deep lore or there is a reference for fans of the youtube channel I didn't knew?

I still had a very nice 90 minutes and it was free. But I would love that it stayed as a conceptual game that didn't tried to use a more traditional narrative. I didn't needed context for an adventure about a possesed sheep plushie gaining divine powers in underground ruins. It should be just the vibes.

MrSuicideSheep is a Youtube channel known for its variety of (mostly) electronic music and artwork collaborations. One of the original "radio" Youtube channels whose main goal was to share and promote musicians and artists. I'm a pretty big fan and when I saw they developed a free little indie game called Sheepy: a Short Adventure, I immediately took interest.

This is a side-scrolling pixel art platforming game. Gameplay is balanced between relaxing platforming, collectibles, and mildly challenging boss fights. The story is light and fairly vague but enjoyable for what it was. I was expecting more music to be involved considering the developer but there was really only one segment where the music got fairly hype. Otherwise expect moody electronic vibes.

Overall I do recommend this game, especially to fans of MrSuicideSheep, platforming, and a mildly violent cozy experience.