If the premise of a hue-changing sheep that uses prismatic lasers to destroy slavering, color-coded wolves doesn't pique your interest, then I can safely say you will not enjoy Color Sheep (99 cents), a mobile game for Android. If it sounds appealing, then you'll be rewarded with a fast-paced, addictive game, and round after round of wolf-blasting.
In Color Sheep, you take the role of Sir Woolson, who stands alone against a rampaging pack of multi-colored wool. Woolson's only defense is a colorful beam which destroys any like-colored wolves it touches. You change the beam's hue by tapping colors on the left and mixing bright and dark intensity buttons on the right. Then tap Woolson to unleash a colorful blast that swiftly reduces the lupine attackers to bones and pelts.
The game becomes more complex as you face wolves with colors that can only be countered by mixing your colors. For instance, bright cyan wolves can be felled by holding down the bright button and sliding from the green to the blue button. As the packs grow and diversify, the battle becomes more intense. It's a bit tricky, but you'll soon find yourself falling into a pleasant groove of sliding and tapping.
Randomly dropped magical items can aid you in your quest with varying effects like a shield, a lightning attack, or a rainbow wave of destruction that disintegrates your enemies. And while you can only carry one item at a time, unused items and active effects persist between levels.
To their credit, Color Sheep's developers recently rolled out a major update to the game. In addition to welcome improvements in how items are handled, players can now choose between difficulty levels. At Junior difficulty, you find a truly ludicrous number of magic items, and helpful hints on what colors to mix in the midst of battle. The Insane level, on the other hand, dumps you into high-level combat in a new setting, and ditches all the color-mixing tips.
A Lot of Personality
Color Sheep is a charming game full of animated flourishes. The wolves strut across the screen with cartoonish ferocity, Woolson's winning smile gleams at the end of each round, and, yes, the skulls of defeated wolves clatter at the hooves our hero. This might sound overly violent, but it's cartoonishly un-gory and underlines the absurdity of the game.
On the Samsung Galaxy S III, the game looks particularly sharp and bright. However, I thought it occasionally looked a bit washed-out and blurry on the larger Nexus 7.
Beauty Only Fleece-Deep?
Color Sheep's charm and recent update make it a strong casual title, but I've still got some quibbles. Though the updated game's levels are shorter and brisker, the game sometimes seems very static since Woolson never moves.
The game is better than ever, but I'd still like to see more improvements. Adding achievements would make frequent restarts more bearable, though the Facebook-powered leaderboards help somewhat. Adding a map-like layout which allows you to choose different stages, like Astro Shark, would be welcome as well.
Going From Good to Great
When I first reviewed Color Sheep, it felt a little unfinished and got by mostly on charm. The developer's update fleshed out the game significantly but it still straddles an awkward place that's too involved to be as casual as Nimble Quest, and not quite polished as Astro Shark. There's still a lot of room to improve, but I'm grateful to see the developers taking the time to make their charming game all the better.
Hopefully we haven't seen the last of Woolson in his fight against lupine evil.
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