Hey everyone, lots of great feedback so far. Good to hear from people trying out the early access / prototype demo, and excited to keep hearing from you all!
Today I want to just chat a bit about what the game is, some ideas behind it and what the future might hold for it. Of course, there's still a lot of time for this game to evolve before some of the "no turning back" details are locked in!
What is "Sheep for the Stars"?
This game is a precision platformer (or rage-bait platformer), designed around the classic "vertical climb" recipe. Master the systems and movement in the game, climb through levels (against gravity) where small mistakes could result in a fall back to the beginning of the level / zone.
Though this genre is heavily inspired by games like Jump King, Sheep for the Stars has a larger focus on the racing aspect of the game. Master each section to compete for better time scores, use tokens granted by those scores to unlock new customizations and other goodies. Additionally, you can also challenge 2 to 7 other players in a free-for-all race in private and public Steam lobbies. In fact, the current early access demo has full multiplayer support to check out and provide feedback on right now!
Why a platformer?
They all say "don't make a platformer" or "saturated market", and this is of course very likely correct. Sheep for the Stars is a passion project, a design I've had for a while that I really just want to see out in the wild for players to enjoy. I do really think the gameplay loop and mechanics are quite fun, and the end-state vision for the game definitely has a lot of meat to it.
The Future
I was planning on targeting a May 2025 release date, but unfortunately some delays have made that schedule a bit too tight. The good news, it's now in Steam Next Fest in June, so now there's a tangible target for a lot of the additional improvements I want to make to the demo.
If you want to help out, wishlists and demo plays are the best way to check out the game and stay informed of any upcoming changes and progress.
You can also provide feedback anywhere you want like:
- The Discord Server
- Community Hub posts and comments
- acehigharcade.com
- Or just any random DM place you find
Thanks everyone for following along so far, also released a big visual update to the demo today. More improvements coming very soon.