New games every week!
All About : Sheep Goes Left Blog
6th April 2013
For the next few days, until April 16th 2013, Sheep Goes Left will be half-price, over at the iOS AppStore.
To celebrate this random decision, here's...

A Brief'ish History of Sheep Goes Left


After SpikeDislike was released, one of the AppStore reviewers complained that there's no way to save your progress, and that the infinitely continuing level was an issue because there are no checkpoints, and no ending.

.. Well, yeah! That's kinda the point!-=-=-

But the idea festered, and I started thinking about how to achieve such a thing.
What exactly would SpikeDislike be like, if you took out the infinitely random world, and substituted it with a series of challenges.
The idea would eventually become Sheep Goes Left.

As such, Sheep Goes Left is in fact, the spiritual successor to SpikeDislike. The aim is exactly the same. You move along, you avoid the spikes, rinse repeat.
But this time, the game is split into little screen-sized chunks.
Each screen contains a variety of spikes moving around in different paths, and at different speeds.
Basically, the spikes do the bouncing, as opposed to the player, but the challenge is more or less the same.

As you progress through the game, different obstacles appear, and after a certain number of levels, you're given a much needed Jump button, too.

Progress is logged after every 5 screens, which counts as a "world". Complete each world to unlock the next, but lose all your lives, and you need to restart that world.

The game features a complete MP3 soundtrack, 10 lovingly crafted landscapes, and a multitude of screens to get through.

Downloads

Originally, the game was created as freeware for Windows, Mac and Linux. This version has no music, but it does have 100 screens to journey through.

I then spent an extra week or so putting together the MP3 soundtrack, before posting a bigger and better edition to the iOS AppStore. The complete AppStore edition features a massive selection of music, along with a whopping 300 screens to complete, with 100 screens being held within each of three difficulty levels.

After that, I additionally spent some time rebuilding the game, yet again, as Nintendo DS Homebrew. This features the complete soundtrack remade in a retro-style, as chiptunes!

Soundtrack

The entire game's soundtrack has been lovingly uploaded to the wonderful Archive.Org site, where you can freely listen to, or download, the entire collection. For FREE!!
Both the original iOS MP3 edition is available, as well as the chiptune-ified music from the Nintendo DS Homebrew edition.

You can Download or Stream the original MP3 soundtrack here, and if you want your soundtracks a bit more beepy, you can Download or Stream the chiptune version here.

Odd Facts


. The first world is entitled Spike Dislike, because this game is intended to be the semi-sequel/spinoff. The later actual sequel SpikeDislike2 similarly has a gameplay mode titled Sheep Goes Right, to help tie everything back up into a neat bundle!

. The game's opening jingle is a snippet from a track known as "SuperDuck", a longer version of which was later used in the trailer for SpikeDislike2!

. The music for World One is actually called "Hello Everybody" and is really really old! I think I made it in around about 2005, or thereabouts, but never got around to using it in any games. This is it's first official outing.

. If you lose all your lives in a world, you're returned to the main menu, and a spike is placed on the world's titlecard. If you "earn" three of these spikes, the game will give you a free "skip" button, on the top right of the screen. You can then tap this, to skip levels within that world.

. The music for World Twelve was originally meant as a remix of two classic Pulp tracks. If you're a keen Pulp fan, you might still be able to make out the tunes by their chord structure!

. The floor in the Ice Worlds is slippery. Leaping on the spot will help you avoid your doom.

. If you make it through all five screens of a single world without losing a single life, you earn a Golden Sheep on that world's titlecard.

. The collision detection for the floor spikes was significantly reduced between the original, and subsequent releases. People still think they're too hard!

. The Clock Ork world was named, and vaguely styled after Sonic The Hedgehog's Scrap Brain Zone. The music also features a familiar drum sound!

. Before the Sheep went left, a Stickman did, in the 2009 release, Go Left.

. The only way to erase spikes from the menu's titlecards is to earn a Golden Sheep for that world.

. The swinging pendulums were originally supposed to be classic Mario style flaming logs, but these proved to be much harder to navigate past than originally intended, and were swiftly replaced with spikes on chains.

. The game was originally going to feature a different "second button" per world, but I was too lazy to come up with anything beyond jump, so that's all that ever became of it!

. The large falling walls of Spikes in the Egyptian worlds actually causes the entire screen to shake in the DS edition of the game.

. More worlds and levels were originally planned for the game, but the size of the game rocketed with all the MP3s, which put me off adding even more to the game. :/

. The final worlds feature Sheep in Space, and alter the game's speed and gravity, to radically alter the gameplay.

. Jeff Minter's crazy Goat based iOS platform game GoatUp was originally titled Goat Goes Up, until he heard about some piddly little indie game called Sheep Goes Left, and decided to change it incase there were any mix ups.
Views 14, Upvotes 2  
Daily Blog
New games every week!
Site credits : Jayenkai, one crazy fool who has far too much time on his hands.
(c) Jayenkai 2023 and onwards, RSS feed

Blog - All About : Sheep Goes Left - AGameAWeek