The Sheep's Meow

Factsheet

Developer:
The Sheep's Meow
Based in New Jersey, USA

Release date:
TBD

Platforms:
Steam (Windows, Mac)

Website:
http://www.thesheepsmeow.com/games/exposure

Regular Price:

USD

$9.99

Description

A game of camouflage where you can’t see yourself. Change colors to hide, dodge predators, and survive intense bosses in the abstract wilderness of stealth non-bullet hell. Lose the ability to see where you are, and learn to feel and know where you’re going.

EXPOSURE and CAMOUFLAGE: Being out in the open is unsafe. Avoid detection to survive. Switch between light and dark forms to camouflage, but careful: you won’t be able to see yourself either.

Entrancing World: Begin defenseless, but evolve into something greater. Progress through different branching paths across 11 procedurally generated areas. Disappear into the psychedelic minimalist design and atmospheric soundscapes.

Intense Bosses: Each area introduces new predators and parasites. Everything is much more powerful than you, but everything has a weakness.

Features: Collect all the Fieldnotes. Beat the Daily Challenge. Discover the fastest routes. Shoot ‘em up without shooting. Bullet hell without bullets. See without looking. Die and evolve.

History

EXPOSURE, a game of camouflage is an award-winning title that was built over several years by partners Brian S. Chung and GJ Lee.

The project began in 2013 with prototyping on themes of evolution and adaptation. Over the years, the game itself evolved from an experimental handheld game, to an art installation, and finally into the videogame it is today. It was rebuilt, redesigned, and iterated on by the 2 developers, realigning their creative process constantly. Rather than specialize on separate roles, both of them work together on design, art, programming, audio, and just about anything else to do with the game.

The team successfully completed a Steam Greenlight campaign in 2015, and continued development for PC. In 2017, the team was accepted into the NYU Game Center Incubator, which provides funding, resources, and advisement for experimental games.

The game won other awards and honors, notably Winner of Experimental Game Design at Boston Festival of Indie Games, and as a Finalist at IndieCade, both in 2018. The game has continued to be an official selection of showcase curations like PAX Rising, Indie MEGABOOTH, MAGFest, and GDoCExpo, and has been exhibited at institutions like The Metropolitan Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The early access beta is distributed through Patreon. The game is planned for release in Fall 2020.

Design Statement

The design is inspired by natural selection of the peppered moth (Biston betularia), which has a light or dark variant, and camouflages against birch trees to survive. EXPOSURE, a game of camouflage is a connection between the brutality of nature and meditative tension in shmups.

The game is replayable in different ways, especially through unconventional level branching. Simple controls and a complex world can make players relearn spatial navigation. It’s about getting lost in observation and draws from op art, photography, and field recordings of birds and insects. At the moments when the game feels, looks, and sounds beautiful, the game can encourage feelings of flow, with seamless progression that’s both tense and relaxing.

Features

• "... you’re completely invisible, making it a tense, twitchy, but also very zen-like type of affair." - Katherine Castle, Rock Paper Shotgun
  
  
• "chill bullet-hell intensity diced with fight-or-flight stealth." - David Wolinsky, Kill Screen
  
  
• "Channel’s nature’s beauty and brutality into a stealth game." - Stephanie Chan, GamesBeat
  
  

EXPOSURE Credits

Brian S. Chung
Game Design & Development

GJ Lee
Game Design & Development

Contact

Inquiries
games@thesheepsmeow.com

Twitter
https://www.twitter.com/TheSheepsMeow

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/TheSheepsMeow

Patreon
http://www.patreon.com/TheSheepsMeow

Web
https://www.thesheepsmeow.com