I’m not sure how you pronounce it, but Shephy plays like one of those indie card games you buy at those fancy gaming and comic book stores.  In fact, while looking up pictures for this review, turns out that Shephy IS a real card game.  You can even buy it on Amazon.  It’s a Solitaire style game where you try to build your flock of sheep up to 1,000 by strategically playing cards that add and take away from your flock.  It’s a free-to-play downloadable title on iOS and Android, but reviewed on iPad here.

One thing you should know right off is that this is a very Japanese game.  So much so that the default language setting is Japanese.  To change it to English, find the yellow button on the right side of the title screen that has some Japanese letter characters and “JPN” on it.  When you tap the button, it’ll change to “LANG: ENG” and you’ll be all set.  Although they still forgot to translate some of the menu selections to English, and the some of the game’s instructions are poorly written and don’t read well.  What’s interesting is that this game was made by Arc System Works, who also did the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue fighting games!

The object of the game is to build your flock of sheep to 1,000.  You can have up to seven sheep cards in your flock.  Then you’ll get five event cards in your hand.  When you play these cards, you’ll be able to add sheep to your flock, upgrade your sheep cards (like 3 sheep on a card instead of one), take away some cards from your hand, or take away some sheep cards from your flock.  When you use up all the cards in your hand, you’ll have to add sheep to an enemy flock.  If you run out of cards in your flock, or if the enemy flock reaches 1,000, you lose.  The problem with this game is that it seems the cards are stacked against you.  It seems there are more cards that take away than add.  And be careful when you upgrade sheep because if you end up having one card left, you could still lose sheep easily with one event card.  Even the game’s tutorial has you lose!  Unless there is some kind of strategy I’m missing, this game is very hard (feel free to give me tips in the comments section if you’re a Shephy expert).

As a free downloadable, you can only play five times per day.  But if you upgrade and purchase the full game, you’ll be able to play unlimited times and you’ll get some extra modes as well.  I guess one good thing about the game is that if you are interested in buying the actual card game, downloading this beforehand would be a good idea if you want to see if you’ll like it first.

Kid Factor:

The only objectionable thing I could find in this game is that some of the illustrations of sheep on the card show them piling on top of each other like how animals do when they mate.  Sorry, I tried to put that in the most polite way possible.  Reading skill is needed for the text, and because of the high difficulty, this game is still best for older players.

Tags: Game Reviews, Unplugged