A wizard had seen enough adventure, and makes up for a living as a shepherd.
While the days are peaceful, the nights are overflown with predators trying to steal the sheep.
Protect the sheep over the night, and they'll reward you with cash the next morning.
In 3 weeks, the day of the Shepherd Conference will happen, where you showcase all your sheep, If your sheep value is high enough, then you'll win the game.
To encourage the shepherd, he set up milestone goals each week to keep track of his growing herd, the weekly goal must be met to make progress.
However, the predators will grow stronger as the weeks progresses, be prepared for enemy ambushes!
Controls:
Move around with the arrow keys.
Interact with Z
Shoot with X
At daytime, you can interact with 3 objects:
- Bell: Starts the upcoming night (You'll need sheep to activate it)
- Shop: You can buy sheep, elemental wands, a boxing glove to defeat enemies on contact, and a dog that fights predators.
- Catalog: shows the amount of a certain type of sheep, see various sheep abilities, and their total possible value after one night, you can also buy a specific sheep for a higher cost, and view your progress on the current goal.
The enemies can't hurt the shepherd, and the shepherd can't hurt the sheeps.
Player 2 mode:
When the dog is bought, you can take control and move it around by pressing 'X' and the D-pad on the second controller.
Pressing 'X' again will return it to it's default behavior.
Also available on Itch.io!
https://ppowersteef.itch.io/shepherd
.jpg)
This is great! Great concept, fun mechanics, easy to grasp-as I thought when I looked at the screenshot yesterday on mastodon-outstanding fun!
Thanks for the feedback!
Today I've updated Shepherd to include some balance changes to make it easier, including a casual mode.
For more info, you can find it here: https://ppowersteef.itch.io/shepherd/devlog/619849/update-111-casual-mode
275 seems like a decent score but 300 is definitely doable as I did several mistakes in this run : bought too much regular sheep that cluttered the inventory even though I had money left to buy golden ones in the end, also was too cautious and bought too much alpaga.
Wish there was a way to sell sheep, or at least get to choose one to get rid of when buying at full capacity.
I'm wondering what the theoretical max score is ?
If we assume perfect play and perfect luck, we can buy "random" golden sheep for 10 and gain the $10 no casualty bonus each day.
Day 1 : 7 sheep gain $35+$10
Day 2 : 11 sheep +$5 gain $55+$10
Day 3 : 18 sheep gain $90+$10
Day 4 : 28 sheep gain $140+$10
Day 5 : 43 sheep gain $215+$10
Day 6 : 65 sheep +$5 gain $325+$10
Day 7 : 99 sheep
So no problem reaching the 500 value in 3 weeks. How does randomness work in pico8 ? Any chance of TAS with luck manipulation?
If we refrain from using the shop and buy the golden sheep full price, assuming perfect play :
Day 1: 3 sheep and $10
Day 2: 4 sheep and $15
Day 3: 6 sheep and $5
Day 4: 8 sheep and $5
Day 5: 10 sheep and $15
Day 6: 13 sheep and $15
Day 7: 17 sheep and $10
Day 8: 22 sheep and $5
Day 9: 28 sheep and $5
Day 10: 35 sheep and $15
Day 11: 45 sheep and $0
Day 12: 56 sheep and $15
Day 13: 71 sheep and $5
Day 14: 89 sheep and $10
Day 15 : 100 sheep and $75
I now think that reaching 500 value in three weeks might actually be possible for a human player.
What would significantly help would be to start with a good random 7 by restarting the cartridge until we get it, some mix of normal/gold/wooly/alpaca with at least one gold in the lot. The extra difficulty would be that the non gold ones would have to be eaten during the game...
Wow, someone did the math here, haha
I previously had tried out a selling feature, but I thought selling sheep would turn into a net negative income. For the purpose of reducing the population cap does make it interesting though! Maybe I can try readding that again.
If you wanted to hear my record: I've managed to reach 418 Total sheep value at the end of Week 3, with the strategy of constantly buying golden sheep from the catalog. Though that was back when I had Selling enabled. I should try that again for the current version.
I'm not home at RNG Manipulation, so I'm afraid I'm not of use there, but it sure is interesting to see such research effort been done.
Now I wonder if the 500 value is possible too...
I did my research, we are in the ideal case for RNG manipulation, there isn't even a need to build TAS tools for pico8 if we just want to cheat the shop.
The rng() function used by your game takes a seed (from the clock maybe?) at start of the pico8, and following calls are deterministic.
This may seem bad as your next random sheep is determined beforehand, but if you have at least one sheep around, its random movements will provoke a call to rng, so we advance into the pseudorandom sequence and the next predetermined sheep in the shop actually changes. Using save states, you save, buy a sheep, and if it's not golden, reload, wait for a sheep to move, save and retry.
Pico8 doesn't have save states (probably by design), but you can run it in a small linux VM and save state the VM instead. If you have a screen capture recording the Pico8 screen inside the VM, you'll end up with a video of a perfectly lucky playthru without any change to Pico8 or to your code. Making the video would take forever (100 random golden sheep is a lot) and would probably consist mainly of seemingly waiting in front of the shop for no reason. Using save states would also help with the "perfect play" part of the plan. I won't do it, too much work for a boring result, but I'm happy to know that I could. I may try plan B with save states though.
Victory, no fancy trick used, just bought gold sheep and saved up cash mid game for the $100 staff. Dog and glove were just bought near the end when I had already reached 100 golden sheep and I don't think they helped.
Suggestion from my 6 years old daughter : "can I play as the dog with the second controller ?"
Thanks a lot for your feedback and analysis, RealShadowCaster! I've enjoyed reading it a lot.
I had tested it out and reached around 478 of total value at the end of week 3, with the same strategy of buying golden sheep from the catalog.
Might perhaps be strong, but I've let it be for the moment.
I've just updated the game again to keep a little challenge alive:
- now the maximum value has been reached, you can now try going for the highest earned value throughout the 3 weeks!
- Selling at the catalog has also been added back in, you can now sell by holding Left+X.
- And, by request of your daughter, I've also made the dog playable for player 2!
(Just keep in mind that the game is not balanced yet to buy it straight from the start,
doing so might get difficult to get through the week)
For more info, you can check the devlog here:
https://ppowersteef.itch.io/shepherd/devlog/621839/update-112-doggy-mode
Once again, thanks so much for playing!
Yay, new version! My daughter and I will try two players mode tonight.
Tried the new selling part of game and it mostly works except for the wooly sheep where you can't choose what you are selling and the big ones are sold for 4 instead of 8.
Tried to start with dog in preparation for 2 player runs, to see if I could pass the 1st week. A golden sheep got eaten by a plant and turned into an eldritch plant zombie sheep worth $10 ! Easter egg or or incredible bug ?
I see, I might take a look into selling later on.
Looks like you found the secret sheep. Congrats!
It's a mythic sheep plant called a Barometz, I remember discovering it and was quite interested in mythological creatures that goes under the radar. When I worked on Shepherd, I thought this was the oppurtinity to add it as a bonus.
My daughter and I had a very fun « no magic » run using dog and glove only.
We lost at end of W3 mostly because the ufos did too much damage. Starting with a few golds to be monstrified then switching to regular sheep might do the trick.(lose 10/ufo instead of 25)We will try that tomorrow.
Using a mix of ram and alpaca would probably be easier to win, but that would be a « dog only » challenge: not enough money to buy the glove until very late, so not a 2player game.
PS : a dog only and no sheep is probably winnable using alpaca only.
That sounds like a lot of fun! hahaha.
I remember I did a lot of limited challenges myself too.
The UFO's were intended to counter some possible builds, due to their flying nature. So most passive attacks (contact damage or Alpaca's) don't work there. But I like this strategic mindset behind it.
I've probably a balance patch in mind later on, but I'll let you cook first. I've really enjoyed these stories so far.
I think I did it.
I've given Shepherd a quick update again to balance out the price values, and fix some of the price mechanics behind the Wooly Sheep. Gold Sheep has been nerved though, I found it a little too dominant for it's cost.
See here for more info: https://ppowersteef.itch.io/shepherd/devlog/627727/update-113-catalog-price-balance
[Please log in to post a comment]
