Clouds & Sheep 2

Genre: Simulation / Misc.

Players: 1

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Review:

Clouds & Sheep 2 is a mobile-style game whose genre I suppose I would describe as “Simulation”, though that only seems like a vague descriptor. In this game, players manage a farm full of sheep by moving them around, interacting with them, and also by moving and interacting with the clouds overhead. This game was released on mobile devices in 2015 before being ported to multiple other platforms, finally coming to Nintendo Switch in 2018.

When I say this is a Mobile-style game, the presentation here certainly underlines that fact. The game uses simple 2D art, bouncy music, and cartoony sound effects that seem to shout out “mobile game!”. It’s not bad, per se, and I’d even go as far as to say it’s quite polished, but it still ends up feeling cheap in that way that mobile games often do.

As for the gameplay… that’s where words start to fail me here. You move around sheep and clouds to accomplish various goals. Gather together clouds to form a raincloud so you can grow plants to feed the sheep or flowers to make them get amorous and make little baby sheep. And you can sheer the sheep and cut down trees for resources, and… and… I’m not sure what you’re doing all of this for.

Yes, there are goals to accomplish to get more resources, which can help to accomplish more goals, but so much of this feels like skinner box-style manipulation to drive engagement (you know, that thing mobile games are known for doing), but it all feels so empty here.Am I trying to get more sheep? Am I trying to complete the goals for the sake of completing goals? Is the point of this game just having fun messing around with things and everything else is supposed to be in service to that, complicating the simplicity? Once again, none of this feels bad, but none of it strikes me as all that engaging either. I felt like I kept getting told what tasks to do without any sense of what I was accomplishing by doing them other than, you know, doing them. And that’s not a game, that’s just work.

In and of itself, that’s not the worst thing. Having a game give you busywork can be relaxing, I get that. But a part of the problem here is that it’s not entirely clear how some of the systems work, despite the game putting tutorial after tutorial on the player’s plate. Sometimes two flower-munching sheep, a male and female, will get hearts above their heads, yet still want nothing to do with each other, and it’s not clear why. One of my goals wants me to collect bubbles, and I’m not sure how to do that – was it something I was informed how to do earlier and I missed it, or is it something I haven’t been introduced to yet? I suppose I could look this information up online, but then it comes back to the core issue I seem to have with this game – I just don’t really care.

In the end, while Clouds & Sheep 2 have a few minor issues I can point to, there’s very little about this game that’s wrong or broken. It all works well enough, save for some mechanics that could be a bit better-explained. The problem with Clouds & Sheep 2 is simply that it’s not very engaging, and doesn’t do much to give players a reason to keep playing it. If you’re looking for something casual to kill time, this game may interest you. But for most players, it just won’t be worth the effort.

tl;dr – Clouds & Sheep 2 is a mobile-style time waster where players manage sheep and… er, clouds. Aside from some poorly-explained game mechanics, there’s little wrong with the game, but there’s also not much it does to be engaging or entertaining beyond throwing a laundry list of chores at you so you can earn the pleasure of… doing more chores. If you’re looking for a Nintendo Switch game to just kill time, this will do that, but not much more than that.

Grade: C-

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