I guess if I am to pop my game-reviewing cherry so to speak, this would be the way to do it! MATH! And a blatant disregard for this merely subjective reality you people call “life”.
Divide by Sheep is a modest, quirky puzzle game published by tinyBuild with simple operations, subtraction and division. You play as a Grim Reaper-type fellow whose job is to move sheep from one island to another heading towards a raft where you meet the goals on the left part of the screen. Each island can only fit a certain number of sheep and will force you to kill off or substitute sheep in order to meet the amount of sheep needed to meet the objective. If you put on just the right amount, you’ll get a gold star, if you put on too many you’re given an X. The gameplay feels clean and satisfying while increasing in intensity with each level introducing new challenges and mechanics. What I loved especially was how the game has an overall gentle feel to it, visuals had very clean, soft, yet vibrant colors and simple but charming characters and objects making it really easy to focus on the puzzle mechanics and not get too distracted. Sound effects resonate very crisp and have a very solid punch to them and its clear the designers wanted it to have just enough cuteness.
“Its certainly not a game I can sit down and play for hours, but its overall gameplay and pick-up-and-play style make it feel like I can come back to it at any time”
Despite its charms, the game does feel a bit dull at times. Its certainly not a game I can sit down and play for hours, but its overall gameplay and pick-up-and-play style make it feel like I can come back to it at any time, which I can admit is nice in some ways. I also feel the design philosophy for Divide by Sheep follows suit for a lot of other puzzle based games that you might find on other platforms with the levels being individual instances that you can retry until you get them right. While I can understand this route I would like to see more diversity in the game’s overall approach to level design and progression. It would be more interesting to make gauntlet-style levels with multiple layers and complexity but I suppose I’m also asking too much and ignoring the game’s intended purpose.
Divide by sheep is simply fun and I found myself having a good chuckle with it. I loved how simple and charming it was overall while allowing depth for the games very simple mechanics to really pull through in a strong, but satisfying way. For a guy like me who could use some brushing up in arithmetic, amongst literally everything else in mathematics this feels like a very tame first review and I would definitely recommend it for its cheap price.
Review Score – 7/10
Drop a fiver and give it a whirl. Chances are you’ve probably gotta work on divvying up the grocery bills properly this time, Sam!
