It's Friday, and you know what that means! The indie developers have been hard at working making a slew of weird and wonderful free games for you to play to kick off your weekend! This week... try to convince a shepherd to convert without losing his attention. Then do some shepherding of your own as a dog looking after some friendly but fragile sheep. Next, start your job as a conservationist in the far future where you must harvest DNA and protect new life. And finally, use your dumb little paws to make sure your human doesn't get a decent night's sleep.
Sheepwalk! - Ben Pettengill knows everything is better with doggies, and that includes retro arcade puzzle games! In this one, you play an intrepid young pup just starting to learn how to herd sheep in the grand tradition of your parents... even if it's less "sheep herding" and more "sheep leading". Things start out simply enough as the sheep docilely follow you to their pen, but throw in some water (which you can swim in, but the sheep cannot), and some things that think sheep are pretty tasty and, well, you've got your work cut out for you.
Vilmonic - Still in development, this little sim from Bludgeonsoft is nonetheless very cute, as you play a caretaker trying to raise and protect the last few species of life in a lonely, distant future. Which, naturally, includes zombies. You need to analyze your critters and make sure they have enough food and water, help them reproduce, dig rivers, harvest specimen, and more. Which seems like a lot to ask from one little person with giant, fabulous fuschia hair, but what do I know? If you play, make sure to give your feedback to help the developer make a better game!
My Garbage Cat Wakes Me Up At 3AM Every Day - Will Herring has a problem, and that problem is small and soft and has dumb little paws. It also likes to cause a ruckus and wake him up every night, and in this short, silly game, that something is you! Your job as the "garbage cat" who can't settle down is to knock things over, cry, and knead on the sleeping person until they wake up. It's not hard to accomplish, but if you've ever had a pet you love that was set on ruining your sleep with an early wake-up call, you'll probably empathize with poor, sleep-deprived Will.
SimProphet - How persuasive are you?... let me rephrase that. How persuasive are you when you're talking to a local shepherd and his (literal) flock, trying to convince them to convert to your religion... and doing it all through a text parser? Lablablab lets you type in whatever you want to say to have a conversation with Ambar in hopes of trying to convince him to worship your new deity... whoever that may be! Answer his questions and respond as best you can, but you might have more difficulty keeping his attention!
Sheepwalk turned out to be pretty good. Good for fans of sokoban.
SimProphet kinda reminds me of a slightly more coherent iBob.
I really enjoyed SimProphet. I don't know if it's just my computer, but the text speed's really slow. Not a deal-breaker though, just interesting. I didn't manage to convince the guy, but
I did convert his sheep to followers of Zeus the One True God. The guy said that wouldn't come to much though since the sheep still belong to him. But they've been promised eternal happiness and many sheep women when they reach the afterlife though.
Seems like it has great replay value, although I've only played it once. 4.5 out of 5, because of the possibly-my-end slow text speed.
Apparently I'm not mature enough to win over a shepherd and his sheep into a cult.
I forbade them from eating poo, and insisted everyone washed their hands before cooking. "But everyone likes eating poo!"
Our symbol was going to be tiny little hats.
He liked his sex, so I told him to have good sex often. "Right after this conversation?" Sure buddy, go for it.
Where did my god come to me? In the bath, whilst I was touching myself. When he got bored of me, I was told to go back to my bath.
The first question confused me, so my religion ended up being named A confused ... (I can't remember).
Something different, I guess. He was a bit disappointed that the religion wasn't exclusive or had member's benefits.
Update