Overview / Usage

Shepherd's Sky is a third-person casual puzzle game where you play as a farmer armed with a leaf blower, fishing rod, and giant balloon to navigate the canyon behind your farm to retrieve beloved sheep stolen from your flock. A baby lamb, along for the ride in your backpack, helps you locate missing sheep who have been herded into hiding by the giant Wolfclops and his wolf minions.

By fishing for sheep, fishing (and throwing) boulders and wolves, you must find and collect all your missing sheep, facing the dreaded Wolflops in order to complete the game.

Development

A lot of thought went into keeping the game simple and intuitive. The team decided early on to focus on 1-2 simple mechanics that made the game fun, and from there only expand as needed. The result was Shepherd’s Sky’s movement and fishing. Player movement was an important mechanic for the game as the game is highly focused on allowing the player to explore at their own pace. If the movement felt slow or clunky it would not create an experience that kept the player engaged and wanting to explore more. To make the movement feel ‘floaty’ and balloon-like the team spent time working with digital and physical prototypes, even bringing in real balloons and pushing them around to see how an attached object reacts and how a balloon moves in physical space.

Just like movement, the other main mechanic of Shepherd’s Sky, fishing, also had to be engaging and easy to use. Multiple prototypes went into how fishing should look and feel to give the player plenty of control without pulling them from the immersion of the game. The result was a soft transition to a new camera angle that allowed the player to see more of where they were aiming and a target that allowed the player to clearly see exactly what they were going to hook. These two pieces of fishing keep the mechanic out of the way when flying around the level and intuitive to use when the time does come to rescue a sheep or remove a pesky wolf.

From the basis of these two core mechanics, Shepherd’s Sky was able to create a light, whimsical feel that encouraged exploration while also expanding on these mechanics to allow for more interactions in the game such as throwing, rising, and dropping.

While Shepherd’s Sky started before the global pandemic, it did not make it to release without being impacted by Covid-19. Halfway through the second semester of work the team was forced to move to an entirely virtual experience to finish and present the final game. A Discord server had already been created but now included more voice channels to allow for individual and team communication, text channels that allowed for quick information gathering and sharing to allow stand up meetings to move swiftly, and even ‘extracurricular’ channels to help keep the team engaged and bonded with each other through the lack of in-person interaction. The team was able to come together in this new form and still produce high-quality work that allowed the game to be completed on time and ready for the Stout Game Expo where all capstone projects were presented.

Controls

Gamepad

• Left Bumper - Quick Rise
• Left Trigger - Enter/Exit Fishing Mode
• Right Bumper - Sheep Call
• Right Trigger - Quick Drop
• D-Pad Up - Capture Sheep (once captured by fishing rod)
• D-Pad Down - Cast/Drop
• D-Pad Left - Throw Object
• Left Stick - Move Player
• Right Stick - Move Camera
• Right Stick (Click) Cycle Speeds
• Start- Pause

Keyboard / Mouse

• Left Mouse Button - Enter Fishing
• Right Mouse Button - Cast
• Mouse Move - Move Camera
• Tab - Pause
• Q - Throw
• R - Sheep Call
• WASD- Move Player/ Fishing Target
• E - Capture Sheep
• Shift - Cycle Speeds
• Ctrl - Quick Drop
• Space - Quick Rise

Student Developers

• Cozy Dumas - Producer, Programmer
• Jesselyn Lonneman - Art Lead, Environment Artist
• Connor Davis - Programming Lead, Programmer
• Chloe Meyer - Character Artist, 2D GUI
• Chris Brewer - Character Artist, 2D/3D Animator
• Sullivan Schattie - Character Artist
• Lex Klusman - Character Artist, 3D Animator
• Taylor Jackson - General Programmer
• Hunter Nguyen - AI Programmer
• Jacob Schwitzer - Gameplay Programmer
• Ryan Milford - Sound Design (Berkely School of Music (BSM))
• Ethan Reese -Sound Design (BSM)
• Richard Chen - Sound Design (BSM)

Faculty

• Joshua Seaver - Capstone Instructor

Methodology / Approach

The game was developed by senior students in a classroom environment as a year-long capstone project. A team of 10 students (5 artists and 5 programmers), along with 3 external collaborators from Berkelee School of Music (sound design) worked closely to pitch, concept, design, and implement the game.Agile programming practices were used throughout the class combined with scrum management.

• Two-week sprints were planned and executed by the students with guidance and feedback from the instructor.
• Sprint milestones (including Alpha and Beta) were projected and planned in advance.
• Using agile practices, students were encouraged to prototype ideas and to iterate tightly to achieve quick and effective refinement of gameplay and the asset pipeline.
• The game was presented in March of 2020 at Stout’s University Games Expo (SGX).

Technologies Used

• Unity (HD Pipeline)
• Wwise
• SVN
• Pixelogic ZBrush
• Autodesk Maya
• Adobe Substance Painter
• Adobe Illustrator

Documents and Presentations

Other links

• BA2 Studio Website
• Itch.io Game Page (with Mac & Win executables)

Collaborators