Sheepy: A Short Adventure is the first independently made game by developer Thomas Lean, otherwise known as MrSuicideSheep. It’s an adorable, dark platformer that is more than it seems to be at first glance and keeps me going back for more.
In case you haven’t heard of MrSuicideSheep before now, he’s a music creator with 12.8 million subscribers on YouTube. With the release of Sheepy: A Short Adventure, he’s branched into a new style of creativity. According to the reviews on Steam, which currently sit at ‘Very Good’, he’s proven to be more than just a music creator with this move.
According to the game’s official website, the game and its multiple zones have been influenced by the community that MrSuicideSheep has built up over the last ten years while also taking influence from games such as Little Nightmares, Celeste, and Shadow of the Colossus.
Set in the sewers beneath a city, you play as a lost Sheep plushie who has come to life and through exploration, you discover that all may not be as it seems. The pixelated art style coupled with the dark undertones of the game’s story make for a strange yet wonderful juxtaposition, while the gameplay itself offers just enough challenge to keep things interesting.
As you play, you unlock new skills which allow you to travel faster or even fly, for frustratingly short periods of time, in order to navigate the multiple different unique zones of the game. Each new zone gets progressively darker in its theme and by interacting with Cassette Recordings left behind by previous explorers or workers at Belgin Industries, you learn more about what exactly happened in this place.
There’s collectibles to be found, too. Spread across the different zones, there are five Vinyls to find (I managed to find two of them), hidden in secret areas that you won’t know are there until you accidentally slip into them. I managed to find two of them. There are elevators which need multiple levers to be pulled in order to use them (I missed a lot of levers) and hidden, lore-expanding texts that are waiting to be found.
I can’t write this and not mention Patches, the lost bear plushie who acts as your main enemy during the game. He’s the foe you have to defeat during particularly rage-inducing boss battles, though he serves a higher purpose which I won’t go into. Some things you need to witness for yourself.
One small included feature that I particularly loved was that when you skip a cutscene (don’t worry, I’d seen it five times already), a VHS fast-forward effect occurs. It’s a very small touch that might never be seen, but it’s so nostalgic that I couldn’t help but smile every time, even when the game gave me an achievement called “It’s a Hard One” that carried the subtext “You can do it!” because I’d died too many times.
Let me be clear; when I describe this game as infuriating, that’s not through any fault in the game. There’s nothing that pushes all of my gamer rage buttons quite like a platformer, especially when I’m playing said platformer on a keyboard when it was specifically designed for a gamepad. However, is it possible to play Sheepy on a keyboard? Absolutely yes, just be ready for some infuriating moments when your fingers don’t quite want to cooperate and even the most basic of movements becomes an issue. Or maybe that’s just a me problem.
Sheepy: A Short Adventure released on Steam on February 6 2024. It’s free to play and while, yes, it may be short, there are a lot of things that you likely won’t manage to do on your first playthrough, so there’s a heap of replayability there. I can’t wait to dive back in… as soon as the gamepad I’ve ordered arrives.
