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Number of Ratings: 16
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1-16 of 16 - inte (USA), December 14, 2022
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1 people found the following review helpful:
Your Grandma's River Crossing Puzzle, August 18, 2022This is the standard "Wolf, Sheep & Cabbage" river crossing puzzle, but with a few minor twists. Beyond the source code and Easter eggs thrown in, it's not much more than a coffee break IF.
- Kinetic Mouse Car, July 31, 2022
- Jade68, September 14, 2021
- tekket (Česká Lípa, Czech Republic), December 20, 2020
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1 people found the following review helpful:
An entertaining ten-minute diversion, December 11, 2020Sheep Crossing is a one-puzzle game, with no plot to speak of, and the puzzle is one that pretty much everybody has heard of and solved by the time they’re seven. But wait, come back! Another way to recite the same facts is that it’s a cute and charming take on a classic puzzle, and since neither the author nor the player need to pretend that figuring out the solution is the point, it’s all about riffing on that premise and finding as many gags, and ways to fail at this beyond-simple task, as possible.
The clever touches begin with some canny substitution – the prototypical version of this puzzle involves some grain, a chicken, and a fox, I believe (it’s the one where each will eat one of the others, and you need to take them across a river one at a time). But clearly, the bear on offer here is funnier than a fox, and a cabbage is likewise funnier than a sack of grain (the sheep vs. chicken matchup is closer, but let’s give it to the sheep by decision). If you want to just get them across the river to grandmother’s house in the prescribed order, you face a slight barrier inasmuch as the sheep starts out too hangry to be manhandled into the boat, but this is easily remedied, and then it’s off to grandma’s, well done, gold star for you.
The fun comes in when you try to mess things up. Obviously if you leave the wrong pair behind on a trip, game-ending acts of ingestion will occur in your absence. And there are myriad ways to fail beyond this, from tangling with the bear to chowing down on something yourself to deciding sod this for a game of soldiers and wandering off. There are lots, lots more, with many nonstandard verbs implemented with surprising detail. I don’t want to spoil any more of the fun, but I found that the author had thought of the most of the ideas that popped into my head, often with different outcomes depending on which of the trio I was attempting to misuse.
For all that, this is still a ten-minute diversion, tops. And I didn’t discover any unexpected interactions that led to alternate positive endings or revealed anything unexpected, which might have been nice – instead it’s all just different ways to flub things up. This means it’s easy to type undo and try again, but also somewhat reduces the novelty and potential surprise of trying new things. But the gag in its current form certainly works, and coming so late in the Comp for me, that was just what I was looking for.
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2 people found the following review helpful:
Not very original, December 8, 2020I don't mind short games if they have something original and if they are interesting or ingenious or hilarious etc. But I didn't think this game has much of that, though you might find a few funny responses if you specifically try NOT to solve the puzzles.
This game is an implementation of the classical "Fox, chicken and sack of grain" puzzle where you must cross a river, except that the animals and sack of grain have been replaced with something similar. Besides that, there is an extremely simple puzzle.
Nevertheless, I briefly felt slightly entertained as I couldn't quite remember the solution from my childhood, only parts of it. Luckily, the implementation is fine. After finishing the game, there is a short list of "amusing" things you can try, which was again fine but nothing special.
I think this might be a good game for someone new to parser games, as the player will get a feel of inventory limits, examining stuff, enterable containers etc.
For anyone else, they might be briefly entertained if they have never heard of the "Fox, chicken and sack of grain" puzzle.
- Karl Ove Hufthammer (Bergen, Norway), December 4, 2020
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3 people found the following review helpful:
Lightweight delivery, December 1, 2020Sheep Crossing is a parser-based game by Andrew Geng, published in 2020. In it, you need to take a bear, a sheep and a large cabbage to the other side of a river. If this setup sounds familiar, it’s because the game is essentially presenting the age-old “Wolf, goat and cabbage problem” in an Interactive Fiction-format.
The writing and implementation are both pretty minimal. The game doesn’t establish much of a tone beyond being mildly charming - it’s first and foremost just a puzzler. And since the main puzzle is historical, you might already have a decent idea on how to solve it due to cultural saturation alone.
The game works as intended, and it has a few small secrets that you can read about from the “amusing” menu after beating it. But it’s overall a somewhat small and light affair, and it can lack surprise value too since the main puzzle is played pretty straight - (Spoiler - click to show)the only real curveball is having to find some grass first to get the sheep to comply. I think the game would have benefitted from going a bit further and possibly featuring some larger twist to the core idea. Still, it could be worth a try if you’re looking for a quick puzzler.
- Spike, November 30, 2020
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3 people found the following review helpful:
Amusing things, November 30, 2020The least fun you can do with Sheep Crossing is doing everything correctly. Many works of IF contain various amusing things you can do, playing a bit outside the box. Sheep Crossing takes this to the extreme. If you ever have stumbled upon a common conundrum involving your three pieces of companionship, you will have no problem pleasing your grandmother; a straightforward playthrough takes less than five minutes. The value here is doing silly things, laughing out loud, then restarting and trying something completely different.
- Zape, November 7, 2020
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3 people found the following review helpful:
River crossing puzzle, November 1, 2020This is just your standard river crossing puzzle, and if you've ever solved one before then this shouldn't take you more than about ten minutes. There's one tiny additional puzzle, but there's no red herrings as there's hardly anything to look at other than the cabbage, sheep, and bear you're trying to get across.
In fact, the game's entertainment is pretty much solely from all the ways you can lose. In that regard it's quite charming and I wish there were a dozen more ways to fail. Geng has a way with words and I am looking forward to future offerings from him.
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1 people found the following review helpful:
A parser implementation of a classic puzzle, October 15, 2020This game is based on the famous puzzle of trying to bring a carnivore, an herbivore and some plant across a river where you only have enough room for one at a time.
It isn’t the first time this classic puzzle has been entered in IFComp. In 2007 Chris Conroy entered an Inform implementation called Fox, Fowl and Feed. That game featured several surprises when you tried to implement the classic solution.
This game plays it straight, albeit with some funny messages (like picking up the bear, which is also something you can do in the 1970’s game ADVENTURE). There is one small puzzle beyond the main one, I should add.
My guess is the author wanted to make a game and decided to code it up and enter. And they succeeded in that. The question is, what’s next?
+Polish: The game is generally well-implemented for what's in it.
-Descriptiveness: The descriptions are very plain.
+Interactivity: I was able to carry out my desired solution pretty quickly.
-Emotional impact: I wasn't invested in the game.
-Would I play again? Once was enough.
- Edo, October 4, 2020
- Durafen, October 2, 2020
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