Long Blow

Long Blow is a competitive shearing game for woolshed people: farm kids, shed hands, rousies, weekend shearers who never miss the stand at their local A&P show, and anyone who first met sheep at a dike flock or a farm-day demo.

A Romney-cross ewe is already on the board when you open the app. There's no intro. Press the glowing ring, keep your finger down and draw along the lane, and the fleece peels off in voxel blocks. The blows come in the order a shearer works them: belly, crutch and inside hind leg, top-knot, neck, the long blows from tail to neck, and the last side.

Scoring follows shearing sports, and the lowest total wins. Time points: a quicker sheep earns fewer of them. Board points: a blow that runs back over shorn skin is a second cut, and wool left behind costs you too. Pen points: the judge checks your sheep in the counting-out pen for nicks, which show as small red flags, and for a ridged finish.

String clean blows together for a combo credit. Lift the handpiece and the combo is gone.

Show Circuit: a season of ten made-up shows across Wairarapa, Hawke's Bay, King Country, Canterbury and Southland. Every show runs a heat, a semi and a final against a field of shearers. Place well in finals to move up from Junior to Intermediate, Senior and Open.

Gear: handpieces, combs and cutters. A cutter dulls with every sheep and slows your blows. Hold a cutter on the grinder to put an edge back on it, then fit it between runs.

Tally Day: four two-hour runs with smoko in between. Quality points don't count here, only how many sheep go through the porthole. Touch and hold a sheep in the catching pen to haul it out. After a shower, wet sheep can't be shorn.

Scorecards keep your time, board points and pen points for every sheep, plus your best total for each breed. Share a scorecard as an image with your own shearer photo on it.

There are 42 sheep to shear across Romney, Perendale, Coopworth, Corriedale, Merino and Texel cross: full-wool ewes, two-tooths, hoggets, lambs and heavy-fleeced wethers. Fleece weight and difficulty vary from sheep to sheep. A fresh sheep turns up in today's pen every day.

Everything plays offline. There's no account, no ads and no online multiplayer.