Sheep In Space

About

Sheep in Space is a 1984 Commodore 64 shooter built on a simple idea: fly a sheep and blast aliens while managing oddball physics. You dart between top and bottom screens, where gravity flips direction. Shooters curve toward whichever surface you hover near, forcing you to juggle positioning and target timing. Between firefights, land on grass patches to feed the sheep and avoid starvation penalties. Each of 48 levels throws new layouts at you, balancing alien waves with terrain hazards. The game’s charm comes from its warped logic, sheep as space defenders, curved bullets, and a hunger meter that drains during combat. Its gravity-based mechanics feel ahead of their time, blending arcade action with resource management. Though short by modern standards, the 1980s-era design rewards quick reflexes and spatial thinking. Jeff Minter’s team at Llamasoft carved out a niche with this one, mixing chaos and strategy in a way that still surprises retro fans.

Storyline

The player controls a small flying sheep and has the task of defending the planet by shooting down aliens, and preventing them from charging up their "planet buster" gun.[3] Like Llamasoft's 1984 release "Ancipital", the game makes use of multiple gravitational fields - there is a landscape across the bottom of the screen as per a normal shoot 'em up, but also an inverted one across the top. If the player is in the centre of the screen, the projectiles the sheep fires fly straight. Getting closer to the land at the top or the bottom of the screen will cause the projectiles to curve up or down respectively, allowing the shooting of aliens close to the surface. Proximity to the upper and lower surfaces also affects movement speed which becomes slower when near either surface. The player can land the sheep on areas of grass on either the top or bottom of the screen, in order to reduce its hunger. A stomach meter shows the player's current state of hunger - overfeeding or allowing the sheep to starve will result in the loss of a life. Feeding also replenishes the sheep's shields. Destroying all of the aliens advances the player to the next level, which has different topography and is slightly more difficult. There are 48 levels in total.