Blue Sheep

For the sake of absolute integrity I am writing this as an unpaid beta tester, former business associate of Noetic, and creditted advisor (unpaid) on this game.
I've been a tester for Blue Sheep since very early on, and I've watched the game evolve. Because of that, my take on the game may be different from others. Still, I want to give as honest a review of the game as I can possibly give, so let me begin:
Blue Sheep is a short adventure platformer driven by a subtle narrative fuelled by the developers' own experiences. The player moves through the game by running, jumping, utilizing a quick dash-roll that can be used to bypass enemies, and picking up flowers that act as natural propellors to help the player glide through the air.
The game's combat is a kind of crowd-control style beat-em up where the player can use melee bashing attacks, distanced bow and arrow attacks that can be charged for a splash damage effect. As the game progresses, these abilities are used in various interesting combinations. There are also other situational abilities that are brought into the game to keep things interesting.
Aside from combat, there are puzzle elements from time to time that keep things fresh. While most of the puzzles felt rather simple to me, there are at least three that come to mind that really stumped me during my first playthrough. Overall, the puzzle, platforming, and combat elements of the game manage to cycle between eachother in a way that is, to me, reminscient of games like Ico in the way that the elements of the game never feel unbalanced.
The music and graphics of Blue Sheep both do a great job of creating an entirely unique and intriguing ambiance that makes exploring the world especially rewarding. The music conveys lots of emotion and atmosphere- I even occasionally find myself humming it from time to time. The graphical environments and character design give the world character and open up to surprising environmental setpieces and variety. It does a great job of keeping the player unsure of what to expect next, but curious to find out.
Blue Sheep has a lot of potential in the way it sets itself up, but feels like the first and third acts of a game. The game is rather short, and there are a lot of elements of the game that I wish I got to see mature into greater and more interesting challenges over time. Many ideas are introduced, spend time in a learning curve, and jump straight into the final challenge of using the ideas without much time spent exploring the idea's potential. This is also somewhat apparent when the player enters the final area and it feels abrupt, like there was meant to be more between and during. That isn't to say that the game doesn't make structural sense- it just feels like it could be inflated with more interesting gameplay setpieces inbetween. As far as criticisms go, wishing that there were more of a game isn't so much of a negative.
I would definitely recommend the game. There were occasional moments where I became frustrated, but general interest in finding what's on the otherside drove me to overcome the challenges.
Graphics: 7/10
Music: 9/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Story: 7/10
Replayability: Low-Moderate
Overall: 4 out of 5 stars.

Great Graphics and Soundtrack like way better than you'd expect at the price. Storyline not the greatest but still pretty good.
Cons
-a few twitchy and hard to actually control spots
-"beast" battle very rng heavy, it just throws massive waves of mobs at you while you are fighting the actual boss and you have to hope none of the attacks chain together or you will find yourself literally stuck while a mob attacks you super fast repeatedly or you get knocked off the edge from any combination of bomb from one of 2 mobs carrying it a giant guy with a knockback attack you are supposed to jump then roll over(while being body blocked by ~12 other mobs) and a giant claw from the sky that knocks you back (all of which also stun you for a short duration) while charging up a ranged attack to hit the claw as all the other mobs just keep respawning. This leads to no way to actually finesse it and you find yourself once you get this far into the fight spamming your jump and roll desperately trying to somehow find 4 seconds to draw your bow when the claw is actually vulnerable and fire before you start jumping and rolling again (and hope you aimed well as you often find yourself offscreen of your target).
Still would recommend as up to final (at least I think it's him) boss battle is a fun puzzle platformer with great graphics and soundtrack that I quickly lost myself in.

At the time of writing this review, Blue Sheep has "Mixed" ratings. Honestly, I believe this game DOES NOT deserve such rating. I had a look at the other reviews: basically all of them, including the negative ones, praise the game for the message behind the story, the cute graphics and the great soundtrack. And that is all true. Most of the negative ones complain about the "difficulty" of the puzzles and the last boss. Really? have you ever played a puzzle platformer? And you call this difficult? As for the last boss, yep, it's hard, then what? you leave a negative review to Dark Souls cuz the bosses are hard? you die, you try again, you get good at it; that's the spirit! As for the controls, the only "issue" I found is with the bow which has a peculiar cooldown timing, but really, you get used to it.
Listen here: this is a fine indie game, with an important message to share. It has been treated badly by reviewers, and that's very unfortunate.

The game is a fun 2D platformer at heart. You play a girl who mysteriously enters an expansive world populated by Beasts and other beings. The beasts mostly run at you from all directions but you can only clobber those in front of or behind you. The art direction is rather good and even though the narration is rather depressing, it does inject that special something that the developers were trying to invoke.

Blue Sheep is a 2.5D Platformer-Adventure game in which you play as the “Outsider”, a young girl who is experiencing the memories of someone who has opposed “The Beast”. The Beast and The Influence are evil forces that seeks to destroy the people of the land, the beast often manifesting itself as a nightmarish shadowy wolf creature that serves as the games main antagonist. Shortly after leaving her home, the outsider finds herself wandering through a mystical, wondrous world following after the one that stood against the beast and learning what became of him as the story progresses.
The main body of the gameplay in Blue Sheep revolves around platforming puzzles ranging from simple get from point A to point B jumping puzzles to more complicated sequences that require careful use of game mechanics introduced to the player throughout the game in order to be solved. Some puzzles required pushing buttons to open up doorways or using a flower that allows the outsider to float over longer distances than she can normal jump or dash to. One puzzle in particular was quite confusing, involving a series of rooms containing sculpted stone faces on the walls with either all eyes open looking towards one of the two doors out of the room or all eyes closed. Going through a doorway leads to another face room, and the next doorway to another face room, and so on and so on with an occasional enemy. The solution was not very clear, and led to half an hour of trial and error before stumbling upon the exit. Besides that, the puzzles were fun and engaging.
The mechanics of combat are fairly simple as the only weapons available to the player are a wooden sword and a bow. Left click swings the staff and right-click and hold aims an arrow, while releasing fires the arrow. The arrow can be charged up by holding it longer to do more damage. Enemies attack the player a couple at a time, in the movement plane with the rest of the onscreen enemies in the sidelines in either the foreground or background cheering on their buddies in battle against the outsider. As enemies are defeated the others outside of combat will join the fray until all foes are disposed of. There is not much in terms of variety of bad guys to fight, but there is enough to keep things interesting, from bomb toting bullies to hulking beasts that do area of effect damage.
The sound design for Blue Sheep is a great example of how well composed music aids in the story-telling aspects of a game and can really assist in the immersion of a player within the game world. Blue Sheep starts this early by incorporating flowing melodies into the menu, with a little piano tune playing with each click on a menu option or back button each adding to a sort of melody of interaction that makes adjusting something as simple as the game resolution a pleasing activity. Inside the game itself, the musical score captures the adventurous and dream-like aesthetic of the environment and continues to compliment the setting as the environments change throughout the game. Towards the later end of the game, the music does a wonderful job of helping to convey the feelings of the characters and elicit emotion form the player as well. In the environments themselves, little sounds such as the clinking of tiles underneath the outsider’s feet as she hops across rooftops assists in bringing life to the world inside the game. In addition, the game features high-quality voice acting for the narration and story elements of Blue Sheep. One unfortunate sound related issue in Blue Sheep is that the volume controls do not work all the time, as in certain portions of the game the volume was extremely high despite all sound levels being set at minimum.
Visually, Blue Sheep utilizes a warm stylized art style that helps bring depth the game environment, from the lush green hills and trees in the beginning of the game to the stone temples later on. The environmental design is full of small details and accents that add to the beauty of the game, but does not distract from or obscure gameplay elements as the player is making their way through the game. The cinematic style camera following the character around the world of Blue Sheep was a design choice by Noetic as opposed to a traditional player tracking camera that is commonly used in games of this type. This was done to emphasize the narrative/story element of Blue Sheep while giving gameplay a movie-like feel as the outsider travels through the world. The character models used for the main characters and enemies are high-quality and unique in their design. The animations are smooth and varied, and when coupled with the fun and interesting character models, provided personality and a sense of life to each character.
Pros
1. Highly Detailed, Beautiful Environments
2. On-Point Sound Design and Musical Score
3. Appealing Stylized Art Aesthetic
4. Strong Voice Acting
5. Unique and Interesting Cast of Characters
6. Strong Storytelling and Use of Metaphor
7. Story Contains Emotional Depth
Cons
1. Combat Gets Dry
2. Puzzle Solutions Can Be Obscure
3. Sound Volume Spikes
4. Can’t Change Settings In Game, Only In Start Menu
5. Character Controls Not Explained Well
6. Big Difficulty Spike at Final Boss
At this point it is pertinent to share some background on the developers Gabriel Priske and Ryan Kratt. Gabriel always wanted to make games, teaching himself 3D art at age 13 and eventually using his talent as an environmental artist on Dungeon Defenders 2. Gabriel was diagnosed with a mood disorder that manifested in episodes of depression and anxiety. Ryan Kratt was suffering from heavy depression when he met Gabriel. Soon the two started hanging out together and connected over their shared emotional patterns. During this time, Gabriel suggested that Ryan should focus his efforts into something to help move past his problems as he had done to help overcome his own. Taking this advice, Ryan began learning how to program and moved in with Gabriel to focus even further on his endeavors in programming. Eventually the two came up with a concept for a game that would deal with many of the issues that they themselves dealt with. Through this project and personal work Ryan began to feel better, with support from Gabriel along the way. This project was Blue Sheep. Both Ryan and Gabriel hope that Blue Sheep can make a positive difference in the life of someone who plays the game.
Yes, the games combat gets repetitive after a while and can be frustrating at times, but that is not the point of Blue Sheep. It is a game whose purpose is to share a narrative and explain concepts like depression through metaphor, and in this regard it is spot on. By the end of the game I was choked up, sharing in the emotion that was being played out on screen and echoed by the musical score. This sadness was a good thing, as it was brought about by empathy for the characters and the understanding of the metaphors that had come to a point at the conclusion.
Gameplay: 6/10
Story: 9/10
Sound: 7/10
Graphics: 8/10
OVERALL 7.5/10
Blue Sheep is a game that is worth playing for the wonderful storytelling and the unique stylized aesthetic that it uses to do it.

I'm not a big fan of the newer Platformer games but I really took a liking to this one. The music is nice and well created, the sound effects are okay. The Game itself is very good, it runs smooth.. had a glitch and kinda broke the game at one point but I fixed it. I didn't really read anything on the game so it game me so twists. Has some puzzle factors and combat as well but all in all its a great game for the price. Only a little ways through it but it's one I'm going to keep playing.
If you're looking for a game to sit back and play with nice music, and a fetching story grab this game. One more thing that makes it awesome, its not in Early access :D.

Blue Sheep Review (short)
1.This game has a powerful story to tell, sadly it lost a lot of its value the way it's executed...
2.The art-style is cute and some parts actually impressed me. Not to mention the music! It was very well made.
3.The game and controls on the other hand..
There was a few bugs here and there and at times it was quite hard to control your character properly.
4.I also struggled with parts of the game where there was no indication on how to progress, luckily I found a walkthrough of the game and the answers turned out to be somewhat obvious.
Conclusion: I personally loved the story of this game and therefore would recommend it if you've got 2$ and lil bit of time to spare!