Recently it seems as though Team 17 have been a breath of fresh air in the indie scene as they have helped to push some unique titles to the forefront. Games such as The Escapists, Flockers, Schrodinger’s Cat and the Raiders of the Lost Quark and Beyond Eyes have provided the community with memorable experiences and the studio looks to be continuing this trend of supporting independent studios for the foreseeable future. While all of the aforementioned titles have either been on PC or console, the mobile market has yet to be tapped into by Team 17 recently. However, the studio’s latest production is a sheep-filled iOS title, which provides a solid challenge and a comical aesthetic.
Hay Ewe, developed by Rocket Rainbow, is a puzzle based point-to-point game where, as a sheep named Matilda, you have to collect lambs amidst hazards and deliver them to safety. The game is controlled entirely by touch screen and you control Matilda by drawing a line where you would like to go. While enemies are unpredictable, you can draw out a pre-planned route, but the line will stop once you reach a lamb or an obstacle. Hay Ewe takes place on a farm yard and eventually a winter wonderland. The farm is suitably filled with animals, with abilities to help you along the way and it looks great in the process.
Much like many other iOS games, Hay Ewe is best played on an iPad as the bigger screen allows you to be more precise with your paths and looks better. The game is delightfully colourful and the graphics are almost reminiscent of a very popular and now much commercialised furious feathered creature game. While the aesthetics don’t change much throughout the experience, they are pleasing on the eye and the environments make you feel at home after the first few stages. Hay Ewe also follows in the footsteps of similar mobile games.
Angry Birds made great use of the 3 star system and this helped catapult the simple scoring feature into other games and Hay Ewe embraces the simple approach. While there is no score evident on the screen to say how well you have managed during a game thus far, your final score is ultimately decided at the end of each puzzle and comes down to how quickly you have completed the area and how many lambs you have saved. There are also a number of candies to collect which randomly appear and these can be used to purchase upgrades and special abilities.
Some of the special abilities that you can unlock include a magnet being used to retrieve more candy to spend in-store, roller skates to move faster, a spade to avoid detection from enemies and various food can be placed around the map to distract foes while you walk past them as you aim to get all four or five sheep. In addition to these abilities, Matilda can also receive a makeover with several hats, sunglasses and various garments to help make you laugh through some of the more difficult levels.
The game does constantly tempt you into laughing and, more often than not, you will find yourself sniggering or simply smiling because of the childish nature of the game. There’s just something amusing about a sheep wearing a top hat being kicked around a field by a donkey. Hay Ewe builds on its pun-based name by providing unlockables which are available to view in ‘EweTube’ and the special abilities can be purchased via ‘Amoooozon’.
While the game does have a humorous tone to it, Hay Ewe offers intriguing gameplay that rewards the player with a sense of achievement once you have worked out what to do. There are times where simple blocks have to be moved around to hold down buttons or block enemies from hitting you and when you finally work out these problems it feels rewarding. As well as posing a threat, Matilda can use her fellow barnyard animals to her advantage as donkeys can kick sheep and objects over fences so that they can be used elsewhere and it feels great when you’ve finally worked out what to do, especially in the later levels. To break up the constant puzzle elements, there are unlockable mini-games such as ‘Whack-a-Fox’ to help, which offer fun yet challenging moments.
Even though Hay Ewe does provide this great sense of satisfaction once a puzzle is completed, the game doesn’t really tempt the player to return and try to beat scores or even promote a ‘one more go’ mentality, which is so popular in many other short mobile games these days. Especially when so many people play games on their portable devices, it seems to bypass the addictive factor which makes so many mobile games great.
Add into this problem the constant “Log on with Facebook” notification that appears whenever you click on every level. It’s at this moment it feels as though it’s a balance between a mobile game and Facebook game. Hay Ewe also seems to require an internet connection of some sort whether it’s 3G, 4G or via Wi-Fi. As many people these days are travelling underground it’s not always possible to have a signal, let alone an internet connection, and the game really struggles to load. So much so it actually restarted my iPhone 5C, which was very frustrating.
Aside from the puzzle modes, there is also an editor which allows you to create your very own puzzles to share with your friends and while it’s jam-packed full of obstacles and animals to use, it isn’t precise as it could be due to being on the touch screen. While you can create your own puzzles, you’ll soon realise that you’ll never be able to create something as unique as Rocket Rainbow have and that’s paying a great credit to them.
Hay Ewe is a real mixed bag. On the one hand it looks great, has some hilarious moments and often evokes a great sense of achievement, but on the other it’s missing that ‘one more go’ feeling that has been provided by games such as Jetpack Joyride and Plants vs. Zombies. When you reflect on that, the awkward internet connection requirement and constant Facebook prompts, Hay Ewe is a decent game at heart, but everything else seems to bring it down.
Hay Ewe is available from October 9th on all iOS devices for £2.99.