Peter und Vlad is another line drawing game, with a twist. The great thing about the game is that there isn’t such thing as collisions that end the game. Simply, you have to herd sheep into the barn, by drawing a path that Peter follows.

The story goes that Vlad, a mad scientist character, has built a super powerful weather machine that has gone out of control. When you’re playing the game you can tell when the machine is going to appear on screen by the power meter in the bottom left corner. If you don’t manage to save all the sheep then the remaining sheep will be sucked in the machine.

Not only can you direct the sheep into mini flocks, but you can get a big point bonus for herding many of them into the barn in a row. Additionally, there are various mushrooms that grow on the field that offer power ups, like a speed boost or double scoring for a limited time. Be careful though, because some contain negative effects, like screen wobbling that distracts you from the task in hand. If all else fails and you have the weather machine onscreen with a large number of sheep on screen, you can always hit the Panic button at the bottom. This extends the radius of the barn catchment area which directs the sheep inwards, so as long as they’re all near the barn they should make it in safely.

Note that the game plays slightly differently to its peers. The line drawing is strictly adopted in favour of virtual thumbstick controls, and you won’t want to move Peter into a flock of sheep should he disperse them and wreck your progress. Instead, short gestures perform well, as long as you adapt Peter’s path to counteract the often skittish sheep. It’s not a game of connecting point A to point B, so don't confuse it with one!

But it’s a pretty fun title all told, especially when the different weather conditions come into play. And in Zen Mode you can shepherd to your heart’s content, though there’s no scoring in this mode you can pick the season (spring, summer, autumn, winter) before you start the game instead of it automatically cycling through. Were the game slightly more rough around the edges we wouldn’t be so fond of how it looks—the pastel colours and simple graphics are typical of the genre now but Peter und Vlad cuts above the rest. The music is a little repetitive and we wish it could be substituted for iPod music instead—you can hear it in the gameplay trailer below.

Peter und Vlad has been on our devices for some time and it’s only now that we decided to give it a review. If you’ve played one line drawer then you’ve played them all, but we would say the the game does react much differently to say, Harbor Master or Monkeys in Space. Like DrawRace, the control scheme fits the game well but it is a different sort of game altogether. If that’s your thing, give it a go as it is a charming experience start to finish.

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More by this developer

Audio Puzzle, C

Review by Ben Briggs, December 07, 2009

Why not try...

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  Flight Control HD

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  Harbor Master

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  Super 7

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  DrawRace