Hands on: Fleeced!

There are plenty of strange games on the App Store, but I don’t think I’ve come across many games – or titles – like Bight Games’s Fleeced! – Shear Terror.

Its gameplay is a mixture of time and resource management, castle defence, and a dash of first person shooter, all wrapped up in stylised colourful graphics.

The premise is even stranger, however.

You play one of two feuding Peruvian brothers who spend their time firing cannons at each other.

Significantly, though, you’re not trying to hit the other player. Instead, you’re trying to knock down their defensive walls so the nefarious Rustler can steal into the pen and shave some fur off their/your pet llama.

The first player to have their llama denuded loses.

In this way, you have to balance running around making sure your defences are being repaired, as well as collecting the gold coins and power-ups that randomly appear. You do this via the virtual D-pad on the left hand side of the screen.

Of course, in order to win you’ll have to shoot down your brother’s defences. You do this by buying and unlocking various types of cannons – some fire quickly but are less powerful etc.

Your other controls are via the touch buttons on the right hand side of the screen.

There’s a ‘sell’ ($) button, and a ‘repair’ button (for repairing defences and cannons). The other button changes function. You can either use it to buy cannons – you then drag them into position – or to upgrade your defences.

Finally, there’s a big ‘fire’ button which can be used when you are standing next to a cannon that’s ready to be fired.

Once, you’ve fired a cannon, the game switches to a free camera mode, whereby you aim using the iPhone or iPod touch’s accelerometer to move a crosshair sight to where you want your shot to fall – typically a fence, although you can damage your opponent’s cannons, too.

This control method was the only real issue I experienced with Fleeced! – Shear Terror.

If you go into the game options, you can tweak the sensitivity of the accelerometer and there’s also an invert axes option (which helped), but I found it took a while to get to grips with the aiming mechanism.

It would have been useful to have a recalibration button depending on whether you want to play with your iPhone flat down or held at 90 degrees for example.

Still, there’s no doubt that Fleeced offers something different from the usual App Store fare. The high quality graphics and music, plus the frantic running around makes for an exciting experience.

Sadly I couldn’t test the multiplayer – which will be available via Bluetooth, wi-fi and internet – which is where I expect the game to really come into its own.

We shouldn’t have too long to get our hands on the final release, though.

Fleeced! – Shear Terror should be out some time in November.