HOMEBREW HEROES
Sheep It Up is a game where a sheep ascends to the heavens by leaping and sticking itself to strips of Velcro. We just had to quiz developer Dr Ludos a little about what inspired him
Where did the idea of a sheep sticking itself to Velcro come from?
The game project started this summer during the bitbitjam#4. It’s a development competition where people had to create a game for a retro hardware using the theme ‘Velcro Sheep’. I had several funny ideas, but the best one was a sheep climbing up by jumping onto flying Velcro straps. So I settled on this idea and started to make the game!
And what kind of work was required to implement it on the Game Boy?
Compared to the Nineties, today we have a lot of new tools that make Game Boy development easier. For example, we no longer have to use graph paper to draw sprites – thanks to the Game Boy Tile Designer software, we can draw them directly on screen, pixel by pixel. Same goes for the development: we are no longer limited to assembly and the Game Boy Developers Kit allowed me to program in C, which is way faster and easier to handle. Last but not least, emulators like BGB or an Everdrive GB, take seconds to test each game build, even on real hardware. All of this allowed an amateur like me to create a Game Boy game on my own while a team of highly trained professionals was required to do it in the Nineties.
Sheep It Up! cartridges are manufactured specifically for the game, how difficult was that to organise?
As a software guy with no knowledge in electronics, I partnered with a brilliant hardware guru named David Degraw, aka Catskull. Among other things, he designed his own game cartridge
PCB. As a game collector myself, I wanted to avoid any destruction of actual Game
Boy titles to produce my own game so finding someone who manufactures his own carts was wonderful! He told me that my game was the perfect opportunity for him to launch a homebrew game publishing label. So now, every time you order a Sheep It Up! cartridge from Catskullgames.com, David will assemble it by hand. He’ll then put a cute sticker I designed on the cartridge, and mail it to you. A few days later, you’ll be able to run a brand new cartridge, made in 2017, on your 25-plus years old Game Boy!
What kind of feedback has Sheep It Up! received so far? So far, anyone who played the game seemed to enjoy it.
That is the best reward in the world for me. Despite its apparent simplicity, the game rapidly gets quite challenging, and it’s always a pleasure to see players trying to beat the high score!
What are you planning next and is there another outing for the sheep?
I already have several ideas for other Game Boy titles, but to be honest, another dream of mine would be to make a game for the SNES. So, who knows, maybe next summer we’ll be here discussing the release of Super Sheep It Up!.