You are a sheepdog. You cannot command the flock — only frighten it. Wolves come for whichever sheep drifts furthest from the others. Keep them together, and get them home before dark.
How it works
Drag anywhere on screen to steer. Tap to bark. That is the whole control scheme, and it works one-handed.
The hard part is not the controls. It is that chasing a wolf means leaving the flock — and a flock left alone spreads out, which is exactly what gives the next wolf something to grab. Often the right move is not to chase at all.
The flock is a real simulation
The sheep are not following a script. They run on a published model of sheep–sheepdog behaviour derived from GPS traces of a working dog and a flock of 46 merino sheep — Strömbom et al. (2014), Solving the shepherding problem (J. R. Soc. Interface 11:20140719). Each sheep is drawn toward its nearest neighbours and pushed away from you, and the flock's behaviour emerges from that.
It means the weaving run a real sheepdog makes behind a flock is something the game never had to animate. It just happens.
What's in it
- 60 fields across four seasons, from spring pasture to deep winter
- Six kinds of wolf, each one teaching a different lesson
- A farm to improve: your dog, your fences, your guardian dogs
- Named sheep — and losing one is meant to sting
- The Long Winter: an endless mode, once you have earned it
Free, with ads
Sheepdog is free. Banner ads appear on menu screens only — never over the field — and there is an interstitial after roughly every third field you finish. Everything else is optional: watch an ad if you want to save a sheep a wolf has taken, or don't.
A single purchase removes the banners and interstitials for good.