Clouds & Sheep 2

A pay2win mobile game redeemed by an offline pay2play version is a rare delight to see, this is the definitive version in my eyes. You can still use Steam Link for this version if you want to play it on mobile, don't touch the App/Play Store version. With that out of the way: The game and its prequel share a unique 2.5D presentation, where the sheep and objects are 2D hand-drawn sprites, but they interact on a 3D fixed-camera plane with depth parallax. So, basically, it takes place in a series of side-scrolling corridors that you can upgrade and decorate. Instead of the first game only letting you have one world at a time that increases length each time you switch, you have 4 worlds called "Pastures"(countryside, arctic, tropical and desert themed respectively) that you can upgrade and now decorate individually to switch between anytime, which I prefer. Though it did lose some of the prequel's other pasture themes in the process, like the football/World Cup stadium, that strange pink one with the piles of hearts everywhere, and the camping/oak forest theme, but I personally think the developers chose the best ones for the sequel. The game takes the juggle multitasking approach to the pet simulator aspect, where there's a choice between between dedicating to a handful of sheep or having the biggest flock the player(shepherd?) can have all at once. They are born by sheep in love having their heart strike a cloud, descending as a growing lamb, and they return to a cloud form if/when they die. Each one has a pre-generated name with customizable wool color and headwear, and is either male or female. The prequel's magic-sex-change-tractor-beam returns here for swapping their gender too. The game has a story where the player is looking for the Fountain of Youth with their anthropomorphic-object familiars(acting as menu elements), and the farming gives them resources to keep going. Experience bubbles come from completing challenge tasks, Happy Stars and wool come from sheep, wood comes from farming trees and shrubs, and petals come from mainly picking flowers but also hearts that don't merge with a cloud in time. XP levels progress the story, unlock products for the shop sidebar, and add points to upgrade the maximum storage points for the stored resources. The shop sidebar's options and pasture upgrades cost some of 1 or 2 of the other resources to purchase. Overall, I've certainly had fun with this one. Though, for my main criticism, I wish the first Clouds & Sheep was available on Steam as a deluxe game too, In fact I think it would also benefit from being remastered with the sequel's quality-of-life and gameplay additions while still having the same art style, challenges and items. Especially since it still has some features that have been perpetually Android-exclusive for many years now that could use some parity too, albeit changed to remove the branding of course. Lastly, just because it would simply make sense to have both entries on the same platform, if only just for the sake of having both games in the series available. Here's hoping the developers release a Clouds & Sheep 1 remaster someday…