Shepherd's Flock
Escape the Shepherd's Flock, or lose your mind trying.
Features:
- Explore a hypnotic dungeon
- Collect mesmerizing items
- Four NPCs to zonk (or be zonked by~)
- Fifteen mind-bending endings
- Morally irredeemable quantities of hypno smut
...oh, and a couple spirals~
Questions? Concerns? Bugs? Contact me at @aetherbreeze.bsky.social! (If you find a bug/typo, I'll put you in the credits!)
Shoutout to
Submitted as part of Strawberry Jam 9. The first 15,000 words were drafted before February, with the remaining 60,000 words, all programming, all sound design, and all visuals being completed in February.
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Comments
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In the TV static sound loop there is a freesound watermark (high pitched occasional beeps) I know because I tried using their stuff too once.
I also would love to poke around in the source code of this one, I really love the game and would like to add my own endings. I understand if sharing src code isn't your thing, though. Amazing experience regardless
About the only thing I would ask for is a screen where I could access the endings I've unlocked.
I played through all of this in two days, seeking out as many endings as I could. Ending 14 is so wonderfully written (though the 53 mention had me restarting a few times trying to win in less than 53 turns to see if that changed anything)
This concept and world are very interesting, and I would love to see more from it, or just more hypno content from you since this was written so beautifully
I hope you place in SJ9!
oh fuck having an easter egg if you finish in less than X turns would be fun
maybe i'll steal that idea sometime
thank you so much for your kind words. after spending so much time in the writing mines for this, comments like yours mean the world ^w^
The classroom ending was devious. >:3
You're such a good writer, and now you're going to be a good game designer. I am so ready for this timeline! ^^
exceptionally kind fox :>
"game design" is an incredibly kind way to describe what i've done here, but i will fold ears and smile wide and accept the compliment ^w^
Holy crap this is an amazing game! I got to the exit and was not expecting that ending. I really hope you make more games because that was one of the best ones I've played in a while!
thank you aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
really really glad the escape ending landed well, that was literally written like 24 hours before the deadline and i was afraid it would be too far out of left field fgdhjfg
no it actually made sense to me after I had explored a bit and read some emails at least character-wise. The environment was very interesting but seems like a good innocent place for a facility like that
First off, I would like to say that I am enjoying this game. I have only played for a few minutes so far, but I'm already having fun!
That said, I wanted to point out that some scenes, such as the one with the jackal (Ending 13: "Seen the Light"), don't use the right body part terms for the character's species. I've only played as a bird so far, but sometimes the game mentions my character's "muzzle/snout/nose" and "'ears' falling backward." There is also a typo in that same ending where it is written "the poke of your tip against your belly brings back a hazy image of the world."
As I continued to play, I noticed that many parts in the game make that mistake.
Edit: I just finished playing, getting Ending 15 (as well as Iana's ending). This was an amazing game! Possibly one of the best text-based hypno games I've played! All the different ways you can get hypnotized, as well as hypnotizing the others, are very well written.
As a few have already mentioned, adding a "Good Ending" or even writing a variation to Ending 15 would be a great idea if you ever have the time and motivation to continue working on this.
VERY good catch on the bird/fur inconsistency. I'll do a pass before the next hotfix to catch as much of that as possible. Thanks for the heads-up -- will be crediting you in the next patch for that attention to detail!
As for other text-based hypno games: please please please give me recommendations, because I deadass only made this because I desperately wanted it to exist and couldn't find anything like it fdgjhdfjgd
And yessss, a true Good Ending variant of Ending 15 is most definitely in the cards. If I ever revisit this, the current docket of expansions is looking like:
- Bad end for the lavender mist in Iana's office
If there's anything else you'd like to see, I'd love to hear it! No guarantees that any of this will happen, but I will at the very least admit that I'm intrigued by the idea :>
I got ending 3, this game is worth checking out!
ehehehehe
very glad you enjoyed~
this is really cool, i really hope this wins the jam my 1 critique, is that the settings reset whenever you reset the run, which is really annoying as someone who’d rather not see spirals or get audio, but i’m sure that it’ll be fixed if you keep working on this game afterwards (which i’d love, because again this is a really cool one)
this is absolutely a valid point
will fix it as soon as my smol brain can figure out a good way to do so
is there actually a good ending? or just a variety of "bad" endings?
There is an escape ending!
That said, it's... ambiguous. There's no ending where you ride off into the sunset, unfortunately.
I had originally intended such an ending, but time constraints be what they do. Maybe in a future patch I'll add a good ending for full-stealth runs?
yeah, i got the "escape" ending. i think it'd be great if there was an additional *real* escape ending, and maybe an ending where you actually take charge of the place after domming the cat, silly as that might be, hahaha
You've got good instincts! Both of those WERE initially planned, but had to be cut to make the deadline. To give you a feeling of how tight it was, the current escape ending was literally the last thing I wrote (48 hours before the deadline), and the game was not fully functional until about 3 hours before the deadline. That time crunch forced some things to go on the chopping block, and a good ending, unfortunately, was one of them.
I *would* be interested in expanding on this in a future patch, though. Taking charge of the facility would be complicated, lore-wise (since Iana is basically just the VP of one division, and the CEO might not take kindly to you zonking his boyfriend and taking over his department), but a true escape ending should very much be doable. Maybe I could tie it to the safe..?
Is there a hint to the safe in the Midnight Office? I've checked the shelves, emails, and notebook for something that sounds like a 7 digit code and come up with nothing.
You're looking in the right places!
You're looking for seven numbers. If you peruse those areas enough, you might find a couple strings of numbers that stand out. What could happen if you put them together?
(For the record, the safe doesn't contain anything that you can't get somewhere else. That choice was deliberately made to make it less of a problem if my dumb ass made the puzzle too obtuse)