BY SAGGYHEAD
This new game from AEG is a push your luck game for 1-4 players, but I’ll be doing a solo play review as Favouritefoe has already done her review of the game here.
This game is designed by Neil Kimball and features artwork of cute sheep in their jammies by Zoe Plane. The game play on the box is 30-45 mins, but I would say that the range for solo play is anything from 20 to 45 mins, depending on the difficulty level you select for the game. Also depending on how much caution you throw to the proverbial wind during your game too.
Summary of Game
This is a racing push your luck game, so by rights it shouldn’t really be possible to have a solo mode, especially not one with no bot or automa to run. And yet, here I am telling you not only is there a solo mode to Sheepy Time, but it is blooming excellent. You have a hand of two cards, and you play one of these to move your sheep around the 10 space race track. Each lap you complete, which is signified by jumping over the fence between spaces 10 and 1 gain you 5 winks. You can, with clever card play, allow yourself to land on spaces which have special actions associated with them. Provided you have some Zzz counters on that spot, you are able to use that special ability. These could be things like move your pillow down, or hop forward a few spaces. Likely during a game you will see only 5 or 6 of these, and there are 30 that come with the game, so replayability is high.
At the beginning of each round, your wink counter starts at zero and your aim is to cross over your pillow and wink counter in a round without being woken up. At the same time as you are moving around the dream route, the nightmare is also moving around. If they land on you or go through your sheep counter, then you become scared and lie your counter down. If the same thing happens again whilst you are scared, you are woken by the nightmare and out of that round and your wink counter is pushed back to zero.
In the deck there are nightmare cards which when drawn are immediately played and these move the nightmare token forward and backwards around the track. Once you have jumped the fence, you may continue on another lap or you can elect to duck out of the push your luck race. Bank those points you have rather than trying to push for a few more!
The solo mode is pretty straightforward to grasp in terms of gameplay, you burn a card before you draw each time. There are no real other changes in the gameplay, a couple of the dream tiles won’t work with just one sheep circling the dream track, but otherwise everything plays just like in the multiplayer version.
However, at the end of each round, the way you score is really different. For every five winks you scored that round (as long as you weren’t woken up), you get to move your pillow down one space. So unless you score 40 winks, it is not possible to get the eight pillow movement that you get for winning the wink race in a two-player game. If you are woken up, the pillow stays where it is.
So there is a lot more difficulty to get the pillow down compared to the multiplayer. The scoring mechanism is harsher too, in order to win you must cross your pillow and wink counter, but the stakes are higher. Your score is based on the number of rounds it takes you to cross your counter, minus 5 for each round. You need to push further up the wink track to get the pillow down quickly, but you are burning cards so the nightmares will move just as quickly as in a two-player game.
Initial Thoughts
Looking at the cutesy artwork of sheepies in onesies, I thought that this game was a kids game. Turns out this is a quick to set up push your luck fun-box. A good reviewer will always admit when they were wrong, and I should not have judged this game by it’s cover. I enjoy “push your luck” games, I love Quacks and have always played the parlour game Pass the Pigs with my family. I like my games to have high quality components and to be pleasing to the eye, so Sheepy Time definitely ticked that box.
I am usually a video playthrough watcher rather than reading the rulebook cold. I was initially a little scared about getting a preview copy and having to read the rules myself properly. If there is one thing I learnt during my PhD it was how to get away with skim reading big bodies of text.
Issue is though, usually they don’t put fluff into a rulebook so I have to force myself to read the text properly. I am pleased to report that not only was the rulebook clear and easy to understand, it was short too, no unnecessary waffle, just straight to the point with everything you need to know in a logical order.
Component Quality
As you would expect from AEG, the production is high quality. The card stock is kind of standard, they shuffle well and the colour is vibrant. The wooden components are chunky and cutesy. The sharp lines of the nightmare contrast beautifully with the pastel curvy shapes of the player sheep.
Colours wise, we have a choice of pink, purple, blue and yellow, all pastel colours. I visually enjoy these choices, The fence is one of my favourite pieces, although there is not actually a tangible reason for this, just it’s a chunky wooden fence. Never thought I’d see a fence component in a board game! The pillows are functional cardboard pieces, although I do remember being a bit concerned with damaging the pillow corners when I was punching out.
Negatives
Although most of the components were excellent, the card stock did feel a little thin. This game requires a lot of shuffling, and I would imagine that soon the nightmare cards from the level I am not using often would be distinguishable from the regular cards. Thing is though, that doesn’t actually matter to me. I am playing for enjoyment and knowing a nightmare card is coming, but not knowing if it moves the nightmare forward or backwards or by how much means that as far I am concerned it makes no odds.
I wonder who the game is pitched at, the art style makes me think it is a kids game, but actually it feels like a pure push your luck a little like Quacks perhaps but with less moving parts. So then that has me thinking it is for much older kids, but then I play it happily as an adult, so who is it for? I think I would be unlikely to look at this box and think it was a game I would enjoy and so would buy. But then I guess there must always be the exception that proves the rule, so perhaps this is that for me.
Round Up
I do believe the solo game is probably harder than the multiplayer version. I tend to complete the game in around 7 rounds which means taking 35 from my score, which usually puts me in the lower brackets. So I guess I have a lot of room to grow and improve. But the most important thing is that it is great fun. Really great fun, so for that reason it is a big recommendation from me for a light on the brain solo.
SaggyScore: 80/100
Likes
● Cutesy Artwork
● Varying levels of difficulty to suit all ages
● It’s pure push your luck excitement
Dislikes
● There is always the luck of the draw which may tank your chances to win a round
● Card stock is a touch thinner than I would like
