Blip Shepherd Info

Play: Director's Cut | Original

   Blip Shepherd is a game largely spawned from my interest in mathematics. It is largely based around taking the rules of Conway's Game of Life and trying to turn it into a bit more of a game! For me this game was a really good challenge and a great way to get into more graphical games as it was one of my first departures from making text adventures. I started simply by building a javascript file that would let me play around with the traditional rules of Conway's Game of Life and played around with a few set ups.
   I then went about trying to think of how to make it a bit more interactive, and eventually settled on the idea of herding the blips towards a goal. It's not an ideal set up if I'm completely honest as it's very difficult to read what's going to happen in real time when the population of blips start to grow beyond a certain point, although in some cases I think patterns do start to emerge which can make herding a bit easier. The first level I designed that actually made it into the game was level 9 which I managed to complete relatively easily the first time I tried it but since then I've never been able to repeat it! After playing around with a few levels the effects that the bio-turrets had on the game really began to fascinate me (which is why they appear quite a bit in the bonus levels) and they seem to be the component I keep coming back to when I want to create a level that requires taking a bit of time to think about rather than just frantically herding and hoping the blips don't end up dissipating completely!
   I put together the Director's Cut version of the game because I wanted to add a few more levels after having played the game a bit more and feeling like I understood what the strengths of the levels I was happier with were. It was also an interesting experience to create a level editing tool to let players experiment with their own set ups in game.

I spoke about developing this game and some of my early experiences developing games on a friend's YouTube series here: