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Escort Mission 2020's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #1295 | 3.108 | 3.108 |
| Originality | #1386 | 3.378 | 3.378 |
| Overall | #1487 | 3.135 | 3.135 |
| Presentation | #2618 | 2.784 | 2.784 |
Ranked from 37 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
You have to get the sheep to safety, but they're out of your control! Smart use of the dogs will help you to guide the sheep to the goal. What's that? Four dogs is too out of control for you? Grab a friend to lend a hand (or two)!
Did your team create the art for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
Yes
We created all art during the game jam
Did your team create the audio for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
No
We used pre-existing audio
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Comments
A nice, relaxing game! The music was very peaceful, and the sheep sound effects were funny. The gameplay was simple, but was open enough for several possibilities to be explored. This might be a problem on my end, but I will note that the game opened in a way which wouldn't let me see the whole screen which was a little problematic. Overall, well done!
Hey, thanks for playing! And thanks for letting us know about the window issue. Can't be sure, but it sounds like maybe one other person had a similar issue. Not something we've experienced ourselves, but definitely something we'll want to look into.
So glad you liked it! Likewise, we had a bunch of fun with your game as well :-)
Cheers!
Nice game! I included it in my GMTK Game Jam compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :)
Woohoo! We couldn't have asked for a better 1-minute playthrough! Excellent!
The only broad strokes you didn't get to see were the wolves and the bridge :-D
Hope you enjoyed it, and thanks so much for playing!
Such a good game!
Thanks a million and thanks for playing! We loved your game too! Really clever idea :-)
Really enjoyable experience with a cool atmosphere. Good job!
Thanks so much for playing! Glad you enjoyed it :-)
What a nice, relaxing time. Having the sheep be so forgiving was a breath of fresh air in the sea of brutal and unforgiving submissions. Adding multiplayer was a great addition considering the time constraint, even though I just controlled two dogs myself, haha. All in all, a real solid game!
We're so glad you liked it! Likewise, we thought your game, since everything the player did was pre-planned, was absolutely great at handling difficulty while still producing a really satisfying take on the theme. Fresh air, indeed!
Funnily enough, we haven't tried doing it multiplayer ourselves yet. We usually use dogs 1 and 4 to push the sheep around manually and dogs 2 and 3 as like stationary diverters to funnel them in certain directions. It's especially helpful on the bridge level. We imagine a speedrunner might be able to make pretty good use of them as well, and along those lines, we imagine a 2-4 player attempt would be either epic or hilarious or both and many other things as well, lol! :-)
Thanks so much for playing!
Really enjoyed this. I actually like that it was pretty easy, because it felt really relaxing in a good way. The music helped a lot like that, and even though you used pre-existing audio, it was a good match for the game. I've played a few shepherding games during this jam, and even though this one was the easiest, it also felt the best to play. Good job!
Awesome, so glad you liked it! We also found your game to be verrry satisfying to play. That's the main thing we were shooting for with this I think. Obviously, there's a decided lack of polish in certain areas, but we spent a fair amount of time just tuning the level and character scale and an even bigger amount of time getting the flocking behavior to work just right (it's that last part I think that hopefully sets us apart from a lot of the other herding games we've seen so far. We took our inspiration from several different Boids algorithms).
And on the off-chance it makes any difference, we did at least write the music ourselves, just not during the jam :-D
Thanks so much for playing!
What a weird idea for a game! It was very charming, the crazy old-timey cartoon music helped set the mood. It was pretty easy but time consuming, I lost 0 sheep.
We've discovered that it's actually quite difficult to have all the sheep get eaten. Yeah definitely a lot of ideas for how to balance out the difficulty vs time of the game
really interesting how you can control all of em with different controls :D
Thanks! And thanks a bunch for playing! :-D
I mean, making it on Godot is just asking for an extra star on everything!
The sound effects are top notch, you should raise that guy's pay!
I need to know, are you three siblings?
"That guy" is tickled pink you like his sound effects, lol! We'll definitely have to raise his pay, at least, like, 100% or more :-D
Siblings, yes, more or less. David and Matt who made the game are brothers, and Rachel, who helped with the brainstorming, is married to Matt, so sibling-in-law to David.
Thanks so much for playing!
Awesome! Have fun!
100% sounds alright haha
This game is very cool! i love the concept, with a bit more polishing it would be Amazing! please continue it after the jam!
So glad you like it, and thanks for playing!
We agree, more polish would definitely be nice :-) At the moment, the whole game is basically held together by toothpicks, scotch tape, and wishful thinking, so we'd probably have to start over from scratch, but it's not out of the question. Some better graphics, new levels, working menus, and maybe a hard mode where the wolves can turn sheep into zombie sheep that can infect other sheep? It's all a possibility :-D
Peaceful entry to the herding subgenre for this jam, and a great take on the concept in it’s own right. Controlling multiple dogs with multiple control schemes is a challenge, but not one that I felt entirely overwhelming.
A feel good entry, a pleasure to play.
Thanks a bunch for playing! We're so glad you enjoyed it! Herding games FTW!
If it makes a difference, regarding the controls, the first three dogs are essentially just WASD (and then shifted over to TFGH and IJKL for dogs 2 and 3). All the extra keys like Q, E, etc. are just redundant diagonals. We probably should've just left all that out, but we also envisioned a world where perhaps a speedrunner could get really good and might want all the extra leeway from the redundant keys, lol. Silly us :-D
The art and music are on point! Great job with this entry!
Our composer/"artist" is over in the corner cackling with glee. MS Paint ftw!
Thanks so much for playing!
The game odly felt very peasful. It just calmed me right down, not sure what it was about having to move those sheeeps just brought me right back down.
Not sure wether I prefered the music or the baaaa sounds effect, if you guys made that yourself that was amazing!
Thanks for playing, and glad you like it! :-)
Yes indeed, we did do the music and sounds effects ourselves (though the music was made outside of the 48 hours). Funnily enough, we had about 9 different baaaa takes that we wanted to include and randomize so that the sheep wouldn't all sound the same, but we ran out of time. Maybe we'll have to put together an outtakes reel, lol!
Great music man, makes me think of the Shire in LOTR. I wish the game was more fast-paced, but anyway, good job!!
Sheep games unite! Our composer is particularly appreciative of your comments; the film score to LOTR is one of his absolute favorites :-)
Hmm, more fast paced, that's an interesting idea. Definitely something to think about for next time. Thanks for playing! :-)
Nice relaxing game, great use of the theme, and the music fit perfectly, awesome job keep it up.
Hey, super glad you enjoyed it! We're really happy with how the vibe turned out. Nice to know others feel the same :-)
Thanks for playing!
Reallly chill game, loved playing it. The relaxing music, simple art, and cute sound choices put all together ended up really nice. Well done, congrats!
Awesome. Thanks a bunch! We knew the quirky combination of everything could either be a hit or a complete miss, so we're glad you found it to be the former :-)
Also, the other half of our team checked your game, and man it is just absolutely solid! Rock on!
Glad you liked it, and thanks for playing!
Yes, indeed, there's a big difficulty spike there. That was a timing thing on our part. Our level design phase happened late in the process and we just didn't have time to tune the difficulty curve properly. Next year though! At the very least, we think we got the music choice right for that level compared to the other ones, lol! :-D
This is art. I love the pacing of the game. It felt relaxing and peaceful - great music choices, it set the tone of 1800's British country-side.
I didn't have anyone to play with, and I still enjoyed controlling all the dogs.
In the middle of level 2 I wondered how fun it would be to have wolves, and then BAM. The mood shift was great.
Honestly I'd love to play a future version of this, especially with friends and the same type of music score (maybe even adaptive as sheep gets in danger).
Great job!
Wooooooo! We loved your game too!
Adaptive music would DEFINITELY be on the menu if we were ever to expand it. As it was, we just snagged some pre-recorded music from our composer's archives that we thought fit the mood the best, but with more time, he'd sit down and write something new that lent itself well to shifting between danger and safety.
Thanks so much for playing!
This game embodies the theme fully, probably the best use of the theme I've seen so far, so props for that. I also had a lot of fun playing this but I felt like the levels took a little too long when playing single player. Also the last level was a whole lot harder than the one before it, maybe put in a level with a bridge and one wolf before the last one. The art and general presentation were not very solid but I use Unity so I'm not sure how easy it is to make stuff look good in Godot. Other than that the game was super easy to learn and really fun.
Thanks for playing! And we're so glad you enjoyed it!
Yeah, we ended up spending a lot of time just tuning the controls and physics/mechanics and stuff, so not a lot of time was left for us to throw levels together. We also noticed the steep difficulty spike on that last level... oop.
As far as making things look polished in Godot, don't worry, it wasn't Godot, it was us! Our "artist" is actually just a musician with MS Paint :-)
I have so much new found respect towards sheep dogs now! This game definitely embodied the feeling of being out of control. Some constructive criticism though, I would love it if the dog was on the screen at the beginning of each level. I was a bit confused at first about where my character was until I ended up holding right and they showed up. Overall great job though!
Hey, awesome, thanks for the feedback. Glad you think it fits the theme :-)
As for the dogs starting off-screen, hmm, that's interesting. We were definitely having discussions about maybe all the sprites being too small, particularly the dogs, but we're pretty sure they should be spawning in the bottom left corner on-screen. We'll take a look and see if we can reproduce that, though we'd also happily welcome a screenshot to see what you mean.
Either way, thanks for enjoying the game!
I figured out why I couldn't see the dogs at the beginning! My screen boundaries were a bit off, so when godot opened it cliped a little bit of the left side. I just didn't realize it until I started messing with the game window :) Also, personally I think the sprites are a pretty good size right now. I'm afraid that making them too big would overwhelm the player at the beginning.
Awesome, glad to hear it. After playing several of the other sheep herding games people made, we've pretty much come to the same conclusion that the sprites are just the right size. It makes it so the scale feels right and herding 80 sheep is doable (as opposed to a bunch of the other games where you get like one dog and maybe 5-10 sheep).
And thanks for checking on the screen thing! Much appreciated :-)