Sheep Crossing

Sheep Crossing is a parser-based game by Andrew Geng, published in 2020. In it, you need to take a bear, a sheep and a large cabbage to the other side of a river. If this setup sounds familiar, it’s because the game is essentially presenting the age-old “Wolf, goat and cabbage problem” in an Interactive Fiction-format.

The writing and implementation are both pretty minimal. The game doesn’t establish much of a tone beyond being mildly charming - it’s first and foremost just a puzzler. And since the main puzzle is historical, you might already have a decent idea on how to solve it due to cultural saturation alone.

The game works as intended, and it has a few small secrets that you can read about from the “amusing” menu after beating it. But it’s overall a somewhat small and light affair, and it can lack surprise value too since the main puzzle is played pretty straight - (Spoiler - click to show)the only real curveball is having to find some grass first to get the sheep to comply. I think the game would have benefitted from going a bit further and possibly featuring some larger twist to the core idea. Still, it could be worth a try if you’re looking for a quick puzzler.