Shep's Herd

Entry for Kenney Jam 2024. Theme: Connection. 

Note: Click “Play as Guest” to go straight to the game.

Introduction

In the midst of chaos, the realms of the living and the dead have become intertwined. As the almighty shepherds (yes, ALL OF YOU!), your divine task is to restore order and guide the lost herd of souls to their rightful places.

Humans and ghosts are fleeing the chaos into the Shepherd’s Domain, a sanctuary battling the darkness. But beware—the connection between the living and the dead is fragile, and chaos may turn them to the other side.

Your mission: Work with other shepherds to create paths of light to guide Humans and Ghosts to their respective portals, ensuring they safely return to where they belong.

How to Play (Please use Chrome)

• Choose Single Player or Multiplayer

• Work with others to guide the Humans into the Orange Portals and the Ghosts to the White Portals.
• If they reach a dead end they are lost to the darkness.
• Click on the map to place tiles, and use power-ups to rotate or destroy them. But beware, everyone share the same pool of power-ups.
• Click and drag to move the camera.

Engine: Formabble

We’ve built this game using our own engine, which allowed us to work together in real-time inside the project. When you click Play you’ll be given a guest account, feel free to create your own account so you can keep your progress!

Join us on Discord to become an early user. Early creators have the advantage of growing with the us and have your assets/games be among the first ones available.

Try the web version here!

Our Thoughts

Being creative within the limitations of the jam, working together in real time and interacting with other devs was quite fun, and a learning experience. We are also celebrating the release of our web version, so this is the first time anyone is using Formabble on a browser!

This jam showed us that our tool can be great for game jams, and can be a strong alternative to other engines, especially for teams.

Known Issues

We ended up with a single player or two players for now, but our intention is to allow many more!

• You don’t see other player’s cursor.
  
• If the host leaves, the game will freeze for the other player.
• If the game doesn't load please use incognito mode.

Features we wanted to add

• Filter T Tiles: The T tile we have now sends the characters to random directions. We wanted to make two T tiles instead, one that always sends Ghosts to the left and Humans to the right, and another T tile that does the opposite.
• Random Event 1: From time to time the Darkness consumes tiles, making them dark.
• Random Event 2: From time to time Humans turn to Ghosts and vice versa.
• Random Event 3: Portal tiles change location from time to time.
• Bonus Point Area: Sometimes an area becomes “enchanted” and any character passing through there will score double points.
• Extra portals as more people join the game.