Sheep Patrol

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Sheep Patrol is an Arcade-style game released in 2019 on Nintendo Switch where players control a dog trying to corral sheep into a pen.

The presentation here is very simple – the characters and scenery are simple, untextured 3D objects, the music is an annoyingly repetitive plunky theme, and aside from the sounds of sheep baa-ing and the dog barking, there’s not much in the way of sound. In short, this game is pretty ugly and sounds terrible.

I’ll note that even though this game doesn’t seem to be on mobile devices, its presentation is similar to a mobile game. On that note, while this game does support standard gamepad controls, the touchscreen controls here feel much more natural to this style of gameplay, and that’s definitely the preferred way to play this game.

As for how the game is played, it works out to be a bit like pool or golf – players point their dog in a direction, choose the strength of his “stroke”, and then let him loose. The main difference here is that players aren’t trying to use a limited number of “strokes”, beat a time, or outmaneuver an opponent. Rather, players are trying to get their sheep to the ending while losing as few of them to hazards as possible.

Well, then there’s also the difference of aiming for a herd of animals instead of a solid object, which makes things interesting, as the sheep all move individually, but don’t just stay where they land after you ram into them, preferring to group together. Because of this, you find yourself aiming less at individual sheep and more at the collective group of them, which is an interesting touch.

Overall, Sheep Patrol is a game that looks and sounds terrible, but the gameplay is decent, and players who may enjoy a simple, arcadey game that’s a bit like golf or pool may want to give this one a look. For only $2, it’s not much of a risk, and especially if you play primarily in handheld mode, this is a decent time-waster.

tl;dr – Sheep Patrol is an Arcade-style game that’s a bit similar to golf or pool, with players aiming a dog at a flock of sheep to corral them at each level’s end point. The graphics and sound here are terrible, but the gameplay is fun and unique enough to make it worth trying, especially for the low price of $2.

Grade: C+

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