Category: Game Releases

Number sense: you know your way around figures, can manipulate them quickly, line them up, cut them down to size. Calculating a tip, or guesstimating interest rate accrual. It’s a vague skill practiced from childhood in a million ways, large and small. Good to have for sure, but not exactly fun on its own. Every now and then a puzzle game makes regular arithmetic and number sense into centrepieces, and polishes each until it shines and fascinates. Divide by Sheep makes the player into a click-clack abacus for sheep destruction, keeping the challenge varied by rotating new mechanics and obstacles at a bracing pace. It can count itself among the lucky few games to make the ordinary deeply satisfying.

Each level has a setup of islands, sheep, obstacles and other dohickeys to fiddle with. The goal, ultimately, is to gather up sheep in groups with specific numbers and usher them onto the lifeboats. In a way this is a pathing problem, but really it breaks down into numbers, operations, and ordering. You have the raw material of the level presented right at the get-go, and just flick to send the sheep from one platform to an adjacent one. Maybe they fall into the water, get eaten by wolves, diced by lasers, mutilated by explosives…or maybe they join ranks with another group of sheep. Add, subtract, multiply, divide: the game is a primer on how these nominally dull operations work when placed at your fingertips.

The puzzles are clearly presented from the get-go, meaning the player can mentally model and consider a variety of potential solutions relatively easily. Puzzles are about tinkering and manipulating the field to see if that solution sitting in your head plays out nearly as neatly in reality. On that front, the game is extremely responsive and easy to play.  It’s accessible from a practical and theoretical standpoint. Each move has a spatial element (paths matter) and a numerical element (how many sheep matters), so in combination the levels are just vexing enough to be challenging without blocking forward momentum. Mental struggle gives way to fireworks as that indefinable eureka moment comes, again and again.

Besides sheep and platforms, there are lasers, bombs, spatial vortices, Charon ferries, bouncing plates and safety nets, slippery pigs and voracious wolves. Each works distinctly, with a few of them counter-intuitive (pigs in particular take priority in some unusual cases) but in general the elements combine in naturally exciting and stimulating ways. ‘Fun’ in puzzlers means constantly teasing new possibilities

The progression and total amount of levels is rather generous, but if you’re already great at this sort of thing the game might more accurately be more of an appetizer and less of a main dish. (As opposed to, say, The Talos Principle, The Witness, Stephen’s Sausage Roll). Still, full marks for using dozens of levels to explore the variety of possible challenges. New tools, new obstacles, little redundancy or repetition. Still finite though, and exhaustible. Each ‘world’ has a different palette, standard set of mechanics and thirty levels, so in total there are one-hundred and fifty levels, with little to no redundancy between them.

If there were one avenue of criticism, it would be that Divide By Sheep’s puzzles can be solved by brute force, just messing around very quickly and carelessly with the possible permutations of moves. It’s not as inscrutable as other puzzle games, which might refuse to crack at all until the proper insight makes itself known. Each level in Divide By Sheep has three stars, and a ‘perfect score’ is not necessary to advance past a level, but a certain amount is required to move to new worlds. This means less gatekeeping and greater accessibility, but it also comes across as padding content somewhat. So whether these features are a liability or a reasonable compromise is a matter of perspective, but they are deliberate and present in the game.

In terms of design and art direction, the game’s buoyant blend of cartoonish gore matches the game perfectly. Messing around just to see the animations and mayhem is fun, as it well should be. It conveys the tone of gameplay deftly and sets the mood without being too flashy or forward.

All in all, the game makes for an excellent romp. Yes, it’s an excellent way to get anybody to practice their sums but that’s like praising a dish for ‘sneaking’ vegetables into it. Edifying to be sure, but a delight in its own right.

By Sponsored 17 Jan 2019

Bestowing your game with the same name as that of the most famous game’s designer on the planet is a bold statement.  Depending on your point of view, you will either be disappointed or relieved to discover that there are no portly plumbers or pointy-eared heroes on display here. Miyamoto turns out to be a roguelike game with elements of both card play and turn-based tactical battles.

Before you even start playing, it is obvious that Miyamoto is a game proud of its tabletop miniatures gaming influences. The title screen shows a board game box and tapping on it will flip the lid, launching you into the game. Each playing piece is portrayed as a static model, posed on a coloured base. The game has a wonderful minimalist look, with the limited colour palette ensuring that the stylised units are both lovely to look at and easy to identify. Information is also kept to a bare minimum as each unit only has two statistics to display; health points and attack strength. To top it off, the way that cherry blossom flutters across the screen with the unobtrusive music playing away in the background, is in perfect keeping with the feudal Japanese setting.

Each of the eight levels is a skirmish battle set on a tiny four by four grid. At the beginning of each battle, your leader and your opponent’s leader are placed on opposite sides of the battlefield.  Tap your leader and you are able to move them to an adjacent space and then if an enemy is within range, launch an attack. The results of combat are easily resolved; the strength of the attacking unit is deducted from the remaining health of the assaulted unit. It is as simple as that with no other statistics to worry about.

At the beginning of each round you will draw some cards.  These do not cost any resources to play and will either allow you to introduce a new unit onto the battlefield or cast a spell. When a new unit is placed on the board it will usually be inactive until the start of the next round. Spells, meanwhile, have an immediate effect and fall into two types. Missile spells allow you to assail your enemies with the likes of fireballs and ice bolts. Other spells can be used to enhance a unit’s abilities; this may improve their attack strength or ready an inactive unit.

There is little opportunity to manage the content of your deck.  After each victory, you are awarded a choice of one of three cards to add to your deck, but you never get to thin out your cards or even see the full list of the cards that you own.  This does mean that the game has quite a high level of luck; drawing powerful cards early on will give you a distinct advantage.

The units have a satisfying variety of unique powers. The catapult is a static unit with a fearsome ranged attack that causes damage to all nearby units. The thief is weak but he does immediately add two extra cards to your hand (better not ask how he acquired them). He is great to use in tandem with the Princess as she gains an extra point of attack strength for each friendly unit already in play. The graveyard is another cool card; it will allow you to deploy an extra skeleton unit each round. Other units have abilities that enhance nearby friendly units, adding to their strength or protecting them from attack.

The overall aim of Miyamoto is to defeat eight progressively more difficult enemy leaders. Once a leader has their health reduced to zero the rest of their troops will pack up and go home.  Hence, you need to protect your leader at all costs, which can be a real headache when you are coming under threat from every which way at once.  It is at times like this that the small 16 square arena begins to feel especially claustrophobic, brutal and chaotic. If you are too wary then there is a real danger that your units will be swamped but throwing caution to the wind may leave your leader vulnerable.

Defeat an enemy leader and not only will you progress to the next battle but also earn some coins. This money can be put towards the cost of a new leader, each of whom has their own unique set of abilities. Be warned, these guys are not cheap. At the bottom end of the market and with an asking price of 10,000 coins is Hanzo whose fiery palms inflict area damage to all nearby units.  Save up 30,000 coins and you can enlist the titular Miyamoto, whose wide-ranging power will give a permanent attacking boost to all allied units.  The most that I have earned for defeating an opposition leader is around 300 coins, so a new leader is a long-term investment.  However, they do give you the hope that they will provide the spark to defeat the final couple of tough levels.

Getting through all eight battles before your leader is killed offers a stiff and addictive challenge. Sometimes the enemy leader will make things a little easier by going on a kamikaze charge, leaving them in a very vulnerable position. Usually, however, the high speed turns and constantly changing battlefield means that you will always need to have your wits about you. A single high-powered strike against your leader can bring the entire campaign to an abrupt end. Miyamoto has lashings of rogue style tension. As you invest more time and effort you will have more to lose, thus escalating the pressure to ever-greater levels.

Miyamoto is a small game with very spartan presentation. There are only eight levels which means that the experience is going to be over sooner rather than later. There is no background story or rules explanation. Thankfully, it is straightforward enough to ensure that anyone with a passing familiarity with turn-based strategy games should be able to pick it up in next to no time. The interface helps, being instinctive and responsive, although it would be nice to be able to check on the abilities of enemy units. Some players will find the approach overly simplified. There is no pinning of units, terrain modifiers or flank attack bonuses. But that’s fine because Miyamoto isn’t aiming to be an in-depth simulation, in fact, with such a tiny field of play, there isn’t really that much scope for manoeuvring your units. It a fast-paced game of throwing your units into battle as quickly as possible, filling as many spaces around your leader, so that you can place new ones ever deeper into opponents’ territory – of course the problem is that they are attempting to do exactly the same.