Herd is Blaž Urban Gracar’s latest paper puzzle game featuring strange little creatures— this time you’re herding a variety of adorable critters into specific spots. With previous community favorites LOK and Abdec under his belt, and LOK Digital currently in the works, we're always excited to see a new design from this innovative puzzle-book maker.
This new printable black and white paper puzzle Herd has you sliding and stacking with the creatures’ various powers to land them on the right spots.
The current demo is made of two pieces — black "shepherds" and white "sheep". You can slide shepherds in the four cardinal directions, and they will only stop moving when they hit the edge of the grid or another piece. The shepherds can also jump over another piece for exactly 2 spaces. If the Shepherd jumps and lands on another piece, that piece is stuck to the shepherd and moves with it as it slides. If it jumps again, then the attached piece is left behind in a new location.
You can start to picture how this forms the general shape of the game: sliding your shepherds around the board, jumping to pick things up and then trying to drop them off after pulling them around to their intended destinations. As with most of Blaž's work, it forms a compact and elegant yet thinky base that the game can build on.
There are additional wrinkles and rules that will make things trickier: sheep can be part of a "herd" of connected tiles which you need to slide around as a group. You will also notice holes on the board, as well as little "bumps" — they are immovable and can end up trapping shepherds in place if you're not careful with your jumping and sliding.
Herd is intended to be played physically (since it's a demo for a puzzle-book) which is the easiest way to track pieces sliding around the board, but it's likely possible to make it work digitally in an image-editor if you really want to try it out and don't have access to a printer. Alongside the game book, there is also a printable file for the two figurines as well as the assembly instructions.
If you do check out the demo, don’t forget to share some feedback. We'll be sure to keep you informed of any news of a future release date for the full version of Herd, as well as the in-progress LOK Digital.
Download the Herd demo here. You can find the rest of Blaž’s puzzle games on his website here.
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