QUICK NOTE: Apparently Mystic Peanut Entertainment no longer exists, although the game wasn’t that great I think the developer had a good start that is, they completed a game and we all know how hard that is. I’m leaving this post up for posterity but the links have been removed.
Today’s review is going to be my most negative so far. Most computer games are massive undertakings. Although you can do it with a single person, it’s better to have more than one. Even lone-wolf developers outsource some artwork and so forth. This is why it’s understandable that not every game can be fun, or a hit. Today’s game is called Turtle Shepherd, by Mystic Peanut Entertainment. In it you play a turtle named Tuki, who has grown up enough, that he has to get a Job. And what’s a turtle to do for work? Why herding sheep of course! This would be pretty cute if it didn’t have some flaws. It’s a 3D game in the third person.
When you start a game you’re presented with a bit of a story telling who Tuki is, and giving you some instructions. You use standard first person shooter controls. Mouse to move the camera (turn, etc), and w, a, s, d keys to move. Basically you have a sheep in the pen, and these ogres, I guess you’d call them, comes and steals your sheep. Problem here is that the view starts out more top down, so you can’t see when the ogres grab your sheep. You can use the mouse to maneuver the camera into position by pulling back to reveal more of what is in the up direction. But it makes it difficult to turn because you always have to keep it in that position, or else you can’t see to play. You use the left mouse button to shoot. And I don’t know what you’re shooting, but you shoot these pellets at the ogres so they drop the sheep. But be careful, you can shoot your sheep which ends that life. You seem to get 3 lives as well.
There’s no instructions screen, and no readme. However you can go into the options for controls, and notice that it says, arrow keys to move, enter to shoot, space to pause. I’m like “what?” Well that’s when I started the game and got the “other” control instructions. This seems more of a beta then a finished piece, however, it has been released. They’ve even open-sourced it. (If you don’t make games then the source code won’t be of used to you, but i thought I should mention it.) I was on easy and yet the ogres were extremely fast, and totally kicked my butt. Not that it shouldn’t be a challenge, but this was easy. Personally I wouldn’t have started with a single sheep. A single sheep is hard because once an ogre has got it, then it’s hard to stop. Personally I think there should be a lot of sheep, and you should only lose, if they get all the sheep. No lives as such. This way at least you could have some game playing time. Then after a certain number of ogres that you have defeated it would move on to the next level. It could put up some sort of percentage of sheep you’ve saved as well.
The graphics are not that great. But this was their first game and they say as much on their homepage. The menu text is vanilla text, and the option boxes are pretty boring as well. Tuki looks cute as do the sheep, but that’s about as far as it goes. The sounds although not terrible, tend to get annoying after while. The music is not bad though. I don’t think I’d get even this far at a 3D game of any kind. So we can give them points for trying. I’m not really able to recommend this, except for maybe critique, because I think with a little bit more work, this game could be solid.
Name: Turtle Shepherd
Developer: Mystic Peanut Entertainment
Price: Free
Final Analysis: A valiant first attempt, but not near what it could be if they work a little harder on it.
Where you can get it: Mystic Peanut Turtle Shepherd page.
Tags: Freeware, game, games, independent, Indie, Mystic Peanut Entertainment, review, reviews, windows