PEGBRJE: Campfire Cooking and Sheep Dreams Are Made of This
Puzzles of different flavours.
Campfire Cooking is a comfy puzzle game made by Layton Hawkes, solo indie developer while also being part of Snap Games Studio (which, won’t lie, didn’t know was a thing). What I do know is that players will be attempting to cook all sorts of things — primarily marshmallows — on an oddly shaped fire to ensure that the night stays cozy and the food stays toasty.
Players will be trying their hands at roasting their foods in a grid fire with the goal of toasting everything available to perfection. Each skewer will have at least a single marshmallow, which can be dragged with the mouse across the different grid squares. The direction of the skewer is more important than one might realize, for moving to a row parallel to the skewer’s orientation will rotate the marshmallow to the other side, while the perpendicular rows will simply move the stick and lack rotation. This is the key to getting both sides of the marshmallow cooked and is the core of how the puzzles are formed, trying to figure out when and how to move the skewer to ensure that the marshmallows get both sides without accidentally burning one.
With this core rule in place, the game slowly introduces ways to maneuver around them so that new puzzles (and by design, new solutions) can be created. The skewers can be pushed by other skewers if possible, meaning that the parallel rule can be subverted as pushed skewers cannot rotate the marshmallows. Wooden skewers can be rotated if there is nothing stopping them, meaning that the orientation of the skewer can now be manipulated to work with the new surroundings; the metal ones, however, do not conform to this fluidity and therefore are stuck in their old ways. Once the mastery of marshmallows has been achieved, the campfire Grandpa begins to add the actual foods to the mix. Pots of vegetables will be introduced as uncontrolled objects that need to be left on the fire to complete the cooking process. Now this doesn’t mean that if all marshmallows have been cooked the level fails, but that the pot must be on a fire to finish the round. As with all new obstacles that are introduced and given a ruleset, Campfire Cooking gives a rulebreaker to create new puzzle scenarios; in the case of the pot of stew and vegetables, our friends have decided that putting magnets on their skewers would be a brilliant idea. Turns out it works, because it allows for the pot to be maneuvered and dragged around when it previously could only be pushed.
Figuring out how to incorporate these new obstacles within the established patterns is part of the fun that Campfire Cooking thrives in while still creating an atmosphere that is comfy and relaxing to play through. There’s no timer, no ‘death penalty’ for burning the marshmallows; the undo button can rewind back to the previous move, and the reset can simply just restart the level back to its original state. The music is simply the best for relaxation and kicking back, and it even is available on iOS for all you mobile players out there (no Android from what I can see, sorry friends). If you’re looking to unwind due to the world always feeling on fire — and in some cases quite literally — grab a copy of this game and have some controlled, proper, and safe campfire cookout fun.
Sheep Dreams Are Made of This is a surreal platforming puzzle game by indie dev duo MiniChimera, comprised of Robson Siebel and Alberto R. Palmieri. When it isn’t causing an outburst of Eurhythmics lyrics, players will be following a terrorized individual who is stuck in an endless nightmare as a sheep running forever.
Being unable to control the pace in which they run, players will approach this bizarre construction of levels with two buttons; a small hop, and a large jump. At first, the goal seems somewhat simple as collecting these coloured cubes and reaching the doorway seem to be the only thing that needs to be done. That is until a mishap occurs, and players fall past the platform down to their demise, only to start a new area. See, the game takes its themes of ‘endlessness’ extremely seriously — falling off the ledge does not escape the nightmare nor does it reset the level. It instead reveals that the levels are all built on top of each other, and numbered as such when entering a new level. There are four ‘floors’ so to speak, so falling from ‘1–1’ leads to a flor marked ‘2-X’, with X being the map players have been dropped to — it also indicates which colour of cubes is available to collect on this level thanks to the colour of the numbers. Now, one might assume that it should be ‘2–1’, but that would imply that nightmares always lead to where one expects.
In case it wasn’t completely apparent, Sheep Dreams Are Made of This utilizes its platforming puzzles more as a vehicle for its story of trauma and feeling of endlessness than a showcase of skill. Those cubes that are scattered around are fragments of memories, so to speak, as every time the sheep enters a door a text appears to reveal his current train of thought. It leans heavily in to the feelings of helplessness as he cannot stop himself from running, nor can he awaken of his own volition to stop the madness. The game will just sometimes flip the script and have players in the opposite direction, or even upside down at times. Sometimes there will be two sheep for the player to follow — although this usually helps with some of the trickier jumps due to the zoomed out angle. If players enter a ‘locked’ door, however, they will find the place where they struggle against fate; a clock to signify the time in stasis and doors that signify the number of cubes collected. If one acquires all of the same colour, then those see through cubes will be revealed and the plot will begin to unfold. That is if one can even acquire those cubes, when many require some unorthodox methods to achieve.
While simple to pick up, Sheep Dreams Are Made of This is far from being a walk in the park. With its heavy themes being put on display thanks to its synergy with the platforming gameplay, you’d be hard pressed to simply start up a game and find it easy to beat. Many times I would mistime a jump only to wonder when I’d be back to that level to be able to try again, only to realize that was most of the levels I’d found myself on. If you’re up for a challenge that is filled with dreaded endlessness, then this title might be exactly what you are looking for.
