Woolfall

Your sheep have no idea what they're doing

You're a shepherd with a pickaxe, a pen full of sheep and a portal that shears them, a long way under the grass. Dig a way down, build the route and open the gate.

They run. They tumble. They climb the wrong ladder and stand looking at a wall. The ones who make it get sheared and pop back up in the pen, naked and offended, ready to go again.

Dig it, flood it, blow it up

Six lands to dig through, from the desert's quicksand to the volcano, and everything between the grass and the bedrock can be dug out or blown apart. It all reacts, too. Sand slides and water runs like real water, filling whatever you dug. When it finds the lava, the lava cools to stone and the water boils off as steam, which drips back down somewhere else. Fire and lava bake sand into glass, fire eats roots and timber, and marsh gas just lies there, waiting for a spark.

Put it to work: clear the way, pour a lake onto the lava, light the gas from a safe distance. Or forget the plan and see what happens. You do have dynamite.

You're not alone down there, either. Beetles, bats and glow-worms go about their business in the dark, while weather rolls in over the meadow up top.

Sheep never die

They go poof. A poofed sheep turns into a small cloud with a face and drifts home to the pen, sooty after lava and dripping after water. After a really bad day, the sky above the pen is full of them.

The wool is only as good as the route

Every sheep that passes a dye spring, a glowing mushroom grove or a crystal cave comes out with finer wool, and finer wool buys more of everything. A golden fleece is in a class of its own.

So you build: planks and ramps, ladders and fences, bridges over lava, springboards, mine carts that fling your sheep out at the far end. Take them past as many of these places as you can before they reach the portal.

Lots of things to find and collect

Chests hide hats, pets and stranger things, so you can look ridiculous while doing honest work. Pets get bored, get up to no good and have opinions about the neighbourhood. In co-op they get to know each other, for better or worse.

Bring friends

Up to four players share one mine and one flock: one digs, one builds, one goes after the sheep who wandered off. Throw sheep at each other, ride on each other's heads and carry a friend somewhere they didn't want to go. Stand around long enough and the shepherds start a card game or a band.

Someone has to wear all this wool

Beneath each land hides a giant sheep, sheared bare long ago and far too embarrassed to come out. All your wool goes down to it, patch by patch, in the colours your flock brought in. Fill out the fleece, ring the bell and see what climbs out of the ground.