1st Impressions

I was fortunate enough a few days ago to get an advance copy of the upcoming game Saving Private Sheep. Due for release on April 16th, it will be an excellent way to recover from the frustrations of Tax Day here in the Socialist Democracy formarly known as the Democratic Republic known as America.

Here is the premise behind the game; The war between wolves and sheep is raging. The sheep fight bloody baaarbarians who encroach upon their pastures. They want to graze in PEACE! They won’t be led to slaughter in silence. It is time to launch operation “Iron Wool”!

At first glance I thought this might be an arcade game but it only took me a level or two to realize that it far more resembles a physics based game.

But simply calling this a physics game doesn’t come close to giving you the full picture. The 80 or so increasingly more difficult levels of the game are not only challenging from a puzzle stand point but are enormously funny as well. The puns and wise cracks delivered during your mission briefings can’t help but make you smile.

The physics portion of the game don’t take long, even on the easy setting, to start presenting a real challange. The challenge behind each level is to help your sheep to reach the small patch of ground under it by removing the obsticles between them. These obsticles take on many shapes and sizes and each react differently when you tap on them. Some of them simply dissapear out from under your sheep. others explode, roll, or do nothing at all.

You need to listen to your mission briefings carefully, however, because sometimes you are actually dealing with a wolf in sheep’s clothing in which case your object is to dump him off the side and not let him land on safe ground.

I can’t say enough about how impressed I was with the graphics of the game. Not only are the graphics colorful but the animations are smooth even down to the clouds moving by in the background.

When the game is released in a few days it will run $2.99 with an upcoming puzzle pack available via an in-app purchase in the near future.

Saving Private Sheep has it all: challenging puzzles, great graphics and animations, and more humor that a Hee Haw rerun.