Save the Sheep

Please Note: For best experience, play in full screen mode

Trijam #256 - Only Three

This was made for Trijam 256. The theme was "Only three". The theme was present in this game in the farmer's ability to only save three sheep at once.

Development of the game was completed in: 3 hours and 3 minutes

The game was made using the Unity Game Engine and the following assets were used:

• Barn, Fence, Trees from "Low Poly Ultimate Pack" by Polyperfect
• Sheep and Wolves from "Low Poly Animated Animals" by Polyperfect
• Farmer 
  • Model from "POLYGON Kids - Low Poly 3D Art" by Synty Studios
  • Animation from "FREE - 32 RPG Animations" by Blink

Story

Wolves have broken a hole in your fence to get to your sheep. The sheep won't save themselves and need your help to get back to the safety of the barn. Unfortunately, you can only carry three at a time. The more sheep you carry, the slower you'll move, but you will also gain you more points. Try and save as many sheep as you can and rack up a high score.

Gameplay

Run out into the field and grab up to three sheep at a time to bring back to the safety of the barn. Each sheep you carry will slow you down a little bit. However, if you bring back more than one per trip you'll gain a point bonus.

Save as many sheep as you can and see if you can beat your high score.

Input

Action	Input
Movement	WASD or Arrow Keys
Pick up Sheep	J or Left Mouse Button

Point Values

Number of Sheep	Point Value
1	1
2	3
3	6

Trijam Post-mortem

This was my first ever game jam and the three hour time limit was definitely a fun challenge to try and scope for as well as stay within. A few different little bugs hurt me here and there and some of the initial layout of the field took significantly longer than I had anticipated. Getting that laid out more efficiently, even just by three minutes would have gotten me finished with a fully playable demo in under the three hour mark. 

I did a sort of "pencils down" at the three hour mark on the dot as I was just finishing up the (unfinished) wolf's basic "chase sheep, drag home, and chase a new sheep" logic. The wolf was still very rough with no animations and very limited AI, but it did the job of playing the antagonist effectively enough. I was happy with this and was playing the game just to find all the bugs that I obviously missed and sure enough, when I finished my first play-through after calling time, I found that the game over screen covered the HUD showing the score, effectively erasing any awareness of how you did for the last 2-3 minutes of gameplay. I decided I needed to pick the pencil back up, make the HUD draw in front of the game over screen, and mark the extra time used.

Next on the list of features was going to be adding the music I had selected in the planning phase, wolf animations, and having the wolf take the sheep back to the woods in the same way that the farmer has to take the sheep to the barn. This would have covered the full scope I had initially aimed at.

I knew for sure I was not going to get the wolf's "drag back to the woods" functionality working, so I pretty early on in the wolf's implementation, I decided to have him just destroy the sheep and run home before selecting a new target. This creates roughly the same game mechanics, just absent the visual of dragging the sheep back explaining why he's running back to the woods instead of a sheep ten feet away.

I know there's definitely bugs, but I'd love any feedback and hope you enjoy playing as much as I did trying to make something playable!