Mutual Proposal Critiques

• 1. What is your favourite aspect of the proposed game? Why?
• 2. What is your least favorite aspect? Why?
• 3. What one change or addition would you suggest to most improve the game?

Vittorio Megaro

1. The coolest thing I find in this game is the introduction of power ups, but not because of the power up itself. I see it interesting because if, for example, a power up is placed in the middle of a crew of sheeps, you may move the sheeps favouring the opponent just to get a power up. Thus the introduction of power ups not only increases the coolness of the game but also its stratecical aspect.

2. Despite I find the game very cool to play in multiplayer, I would not play more than 2 or 3 games in a row just alone. Playing it with other people will push me to beat them, but playing it alone, somehow, will not push me to do my best.

3. As I can see in your game proposal you are planning to insert different kind of "extra creatures that distract the sheeps". I would rather focus first on different kind of sheep "internal" behaviours, instead of some "external" events. For examples some kind of sheeps (like goats for example) can start running with other sheeps just because it sees them running. Or some big sheep (like rams) are more difficult to push towards a fance since they are not that afraid by you.

Riccardo Roveri

1. In general I like your gameplay's idea very much. Being able to move crowds really gives a feeling of power to the players. I also like that the idea is quite simple, but has a lot of potential in terms of tuning, which is great for the goal of the course.

2. I have the impression that in order to amuse the players for more than just a couple of hours you will need to design quite many different maps. Once a player finds (or sees) the best strategy to win in a map, he might just try to repeat it every time. Even though you kind of motivated it in your proposal, I still don't see a strong connection between this game and the course's theme "dreams". Maybe adding a background story explained to the players between the different levels would help.

3. I would definitely think about introducing different kinds of terrain. Having mountains (where the animals go slower, or don't even go cause it's too steep) or rivers could increase the strategical aspect of your game a lot and force the players to think.

Emanuele Rudel

1. I like the feature of giving power-ups to the players because this will definitely spice up the gameplay.

2. I am not sure that for big levels and multiplayer matches a single camera moving around could work. Even with a single player and a large map area, it may be difficult to adopt a good strategy if it is not possible to see the entire map. In a multiplayer environment, some players may not see their characters/fences which would be a big disadvantage.

3. As it has also been suggested during the pitch, it would be cool to have power-ups different from camouflage and goodies, for example think about something that gives a disadvantage to your opponents (set sheep on fire, …). This part can be very creative, and if you focus on it the result will be a game that is really fun to play.

Frederik Mutzel

1. The game is really easy (and easy to learn) at the core and leaves a lot of room for cool improvements.

2. There was a game called "Sheep" in 2000 which had similar mechanics, but was instead focused on single player. I played that and it had a lot of puzzles and additional mechanics to keep the game interesting. I fear that the novelty of your game could wear off pretty quickly - but it might as well be the case that multiplayer provides enough depth in and of itself.

3. I would suggest to even remove the single player mode entirely from the final game - or just keep it as a "training" mode. There's no real challenge or conflict, so you would have to make one up (i.e. timer).

Aniruddha Loya

1. The idea is simple and yet has the element of fun and engagement. Multiplayer mode can be real fun with power-ups!

2. The story suggested that the character counted sheep to sleep and one day wanted to see more sheep jumping, but somehow it doesn't conclude with character's sleep at the end. Also, link with dreams is weak except for the relation of sleep and dreams?

3. You'll need to have a wide variety of option (different levels and power-ups) otherwise it can soon get boring, esp. single player mode.