Oh! Sheep is a peculiar little game. The idea is that you are supposed to help save the world from the evil Dr. Friedrich by… escaping from him? What’s more, this is further accomplished by eating his berries to change colors, allowing you to activate switches and leave via UFO. Yes, friends, we’re through the looking glass on this one. Just roll with it.
Oh! Sheep is a peculiar little game. The idea is that you are supposed to help save the world from the evil Dr. Friedrich by… escaping from him? What’s more, this is further accomplished by eating his berries to change colors, allowing you to activate switches and leave via UFO.
Yes, friends, we’re through the looking glass on this one. Just roll with it.
The premise is explained in a short comic book-like format at the start of the game, though if you’re playing this on an iPhone, you’ll get a hint as to this game’s troubles. Put simply, the text featured here and throughout Oh! Sheep is a bit too small (not quite unreadable, but uncomfortably legible), and overall the game feels like it was meant to be played on the iPad, with iPhones and iPods being little more than an afterthought.
The gameplay is clever enough. In a fashion which feels inspired by the likes of Spy Mouse, Oh! Sheep has you navigate an obstacle course with the goal of getting all your sheep to the end. This is accomplished by drawing lines for each sheep to follow through and around a variety of traps — such as lasers, cannonballs, and blockades.
Along the way, your sheep will find berries to eat and obstacles associated with different colors, including their natural white. You’ll need to time the movements of the sheep to get between the traps, as well as position them to activate their color-coordinated switches while the other sheep get through other portions of the stage. At the end, each must be moved to the appropriately-colored transporter so they can be picked up by a UFO and whisked away.
Generally speaking, it’s playable — and even fun — but there are a few issues which detract from the overall experience. One is that moving the sheep can be a bit tricky. While drawing lines works well enough, the problem can be in where to stop. The lines and areas obstructed by your finger can be off just a bit, which can cause problems such as rerouting the wrong sheep or, more likely, not getting them to stop right on the switch or transporter pad as needed.
This wouldn’t be such a big deal, but the game’s scoring is rather harsh. In addition to a red emblem for grabbing all the coins in a level, there is another for the length of time it takes to complete, and a third for finishing it with x number of paths drawn or less. It’s difficult to keep the number of paths down when you’re having to add movements because the sheep tend to stop right next to where you want them to be.
Finally, one bit of advice: If you have a thought on the game, be sure to rate it on iTunes. Otherwise, it will prompt you for a review over and over and over and over again after each stage. In other words, it nags you incessantly.
Oh! Sheep is a good little game, but it’s not as good as it should be on the iPhone, and playing it on a small screen is not really recommended. While we haven’t tried it ourselves, it seems that playing on an iPad is likely to produce the experience desired by developers and players alike.
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