Inside Social Games

It seems that everything in the gaming world today has to follow some sort of rule dictating that you have to play a grizzled, short haired guy that kills off evil aliens, demons, or maybe even demon aliens who’s leading support is a sexy, bombshell girl straight out of a Victoria Secret catalog. What ever happened to the old days of over-the-top creativity that bordered on the edge of weird? During the early days of games, you could jump on your Nintendo and play games that ranged from dinosaur riding cowboys shooting ray guns to talking animals in space ships. The fun and bizarre ideas reigned and it was truly a glorious age for creativity.

You don’t see that level of creativity as much any more, and this alone makes the Gogogic Facebook title Stack’em Sheep so refreshing. Okay, so it’s not dinosaur riding cowboys, but it certainly meets the qualification of strange and creative.

You play the game as “Farmer John,” who, for whatever odd reason, has decided to stack his sheep one on top of the other. Well, despite being a farmer, he is surprisingly resourceful and has managed to suspend himself in the air with a seemingly limitless supply of sheep. He sways back and forth and you have to time when to let go and stack the sheep as high as you can. As the stack gets higher, the fuzzy tower of living clothing begins to sway more and more.

The game play is very simple and easy to learn (stack sheep until you miss three times and loose) which is something more developers should take to heart (you’ve all heard the saying). Gogogic knows the game is simple, so instead of piling on loads of complicated features that so many other designers do, they instead choose to polish this one feature to be as fun and amusing as possible. The game is just funny, and it’s impossible to play without cracking a smile.

Right off the bat, you’re greeted with a familiar music track that many will probably recognize and I couldn’t help but laugh when I heard it. I won’t tell you what it is, but play and I bet you recognize it. The music choice is perfect as you stack the sheep and watch them strain and squirm in a dry humor sort of fashion leaving you to wonder bizarre thoughts are going through their heads. Even when you fail to stack properly, the missed sheep will bounce off the stack with an effect akin to classic Looney Toons, and the fact that the developers took the time to polish the loose condition, even if it is just a little, is something to be admired as it is often overlooked.

Socially, the game doesn’t bring anything special to the table. It simply compares your scores to those of your invited friends and ranks them. However, Stack’em is still technically in beta, and Gogogic is still looking to develop it further. This title is the first Facebook title for Gogogic, and from it they wish to further expand upon more multiplayer and community oriented features. Whether or not we will see a multiplayer iteration on Stack’em specifically, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Despite the common lack of true social game play, the future of Stack’em as well as Gogogic looks bright. The game is very well polished, and is truly creative in an industry that often seems repetitive and even stagnant. It looks great and is perfect for a quick laugh. As I said earlier though, the game is still in its beta phase, so expect to see a few changes before it is officially “complete.” While we may not see more multiplayer features for this particular game right away, I am confident we will be seeing a lot more of them in future Gogogic titles.