The makers of Shear Madness have released a new game! This one was a little less jam-style and involved some more folks, and the spirit lives on even stronger! In Shear Madness, we wanted to make a simple puzzle that had the feeling of something at stake. At the end of the day, it’s just sheep, and let’s be fair, even if they weren’t possessed by a demon most of them would become pillows, coats, and jello sooner or later, so we gave it some character with the shepherd and goatman, and it seems to have been pretty successful.

I think we took that a step further in our just-released collaboration, Sergeant Stumpy. In this game, you play as a dog whose job it is to protect a squad of soldiers from unseen threats as they make their way across a mine-riddled battlefield. Inspired by an actual dog from World War I, we took cues from imagery and music of the time to create a pretty immersive action/puzzle/literal-minesweeper with a lot of heart - Honestly, sometimes when I’m playing it, I actually feel like my character movements are at least a little dog-like.

So what makes it engaging? In Shear Madness we had the shepherd and goatman, but in Sergeant Stumpy it’s all top-down and the characters are just shapes, really. I personally think it’s in the little details. The dog sniffing and growling as you move around the battlefield; the way the soldiers have different personalities - some with packs, some with cigars; the less rhythmic, more atmospheric music. I think as this team continues to collaborate we’re finding that a simple game can be given a whole new life with a different approach to audio and visual detail.

In Shear Madness, we gave the sheep random faces and coat colors, and the sound effects vary enough that each sheep has some sort of personality, and it amazes me how something as simple as telling a sprite renderer to choose from an array of colors can add so much to a game. In a game jam setting such as that, these sorts of observations are invaluable, and I highly encourage anyone participating in a jam to consider how effectively they are pushing the assets they’re already using.

I’d like to write up more on this subject, but I’ll save that for another time. Huge shoutout to all the artists and musicians out there working on games, your work has so much impact. In the instances of Shear Madness and Sergeant Stumpy, a huge shoutout goes to Sebastian (@Murder_Punch) and our awesome audio team Tyler and Thom.

Thanks for playing indie games and motivating creators with your comments!