Readers outside of Europe might be surprised hearing about the popularity of a videogame character known as Sven, which main goal is to be making "love" to as many sheep as possible, but it sure happened, and the Sven games even gathered quite a little cult-following. Besides Oktoberfest, it seems like Germany is responsible for yet another great invention – Videogames involving sex with sheep!

For our readers in Europe, I'd bet you all remember either playing one of these naughty Sven Bømwøllen videogame titles on your PC yourself, or at least remember stumbling upon the CD-ROM boxes at your local store(s) once or twice, somewhere around the early 2000's.

Let's be real - it's hard to forget an entire game series or franchise that's known as the "sheep-fucking games".

We need to talk about Kevin Sven (Retrospect)

Oddly enough and unlike you would likely expect, this wasn't just some one-time immature game that was developed as a little joke and ended up getting a bit out of hand, in fact, our horny woolen buddy got so popular over time, that a total of seven titles were released in the Sven Bømwøllen videogame series (between 2002 and 2007).

Pretty impressive number, especially considering the joke gets old really fast. Perhaps a sex-addicted sheep like Sven, was exactly the kind of hero we needed during that era, but we just never realized it.

I guess it's true what they say after all - "Not all heroes wear capes", some might actually be carrying wool.

Why these games gotten as popular as they did will likely always remain a mystery, nevertheless, for European gamers like myself, the Sven Bømwøllen games sure hold their fair share of nostalgic value, so time for a retrospect of this (in)famous adult games series.

Who is the horny black sheep character Sven? (Origin)

To learn about origin of the infamous black sheep Sven character, we need to go back to the early days of the Germany-based game developer studio Phenomedia, because besides the Sven Bømwøllen franchise, Phenomedia already had a popular videogame franchise on their resume with their very own "remakes" of the classic 8-bit Duck Hunt, known as "Moorhuhn" aka Moorhuhnjagd.

Due to the insanely fast rise of popularity of the original Moorhuhn game, it didn't take long before it spawned many sequels and spin-offs.

While some Moorhuhn titles were released for the US market using the title "Crazy Chicken", I don't believe they even managed to get anywhere near close the amount of players this fun little shooter game had in Europe (and mainly Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France).

Even though the Moorhuhn games mainly started out as Duck Hunt knock-offs for the PC, the franchise would later expand to all sorts of different genres, ranging from soccer to multiple sidescrolling platformers, to even having its own kart racing and pinball game. The Moorhuhn game series ran from 1999 to 2018 and even got ported to other game systems.

While in general, these Moorhuhn games were quite mild and targeting all ages, that being said, one character who happened to make its debut in one of the Moorhuhn games was, yes, you've guessed it – Sven!

And what an entrance he made! In the background of the Moorhuhn game, look who managed to score and got laid? That's my boy!

Little did we know that on that very same day, a star was born, while Germany would never be the same ever again... Ok, that last part might have been a lie.

Phenomedia's naughty easter eggs and adult videogame releases

These kind of NSFW easter eggs shouldn't come as a huge surprise considering Phenomedia also released other spicy game titles, including "Leisure Suit Larry - Kühle Drinks und heiße Girls", as well as other naughty games such as the Sven franchise and "Lederzwerge", a game in which you need to prevent gay dwarves from getting down and dirty on each other during work hours, by clicking on them using the mouse pointer.

Yes, a game about gay dwarves actually exists...

Some people might consider a few of these gaming titles released by Phenomedia to be best suited for the "bad taste" category because of all the sexual jokes and NSFW easter eggs within their products.

Sure, they might have been responsible for videogames involving sex with sheep and gay dwarves, however, that didn't stop Phenomedia to grow rapidly in popularity, even to such a high degree that Phenomedia eventually ended up becoming the very first software company in Germany to take its company public (in November of 1999).

Inserting a few bad taste jokes, some toilet humor and in-game sex does seem to be paying off in some cases, as Phenomedia's company is the living proof of that - their shares saw a massive growth of over 75% thanks to the many media coverage their game titles had gotten, combined with all the revenue made from merchandise sales. Not bad, ha?

Now that we've covered Sven's origins and the masterminds behind the character, we can finally move on to today's main topic, being Phenomedia's second most popular franchise after Moorhuhn - the infamous sheep-fucking videogame(s), known as Sven Bømwølle.

Sven, the sheep breeding videogame franchise

After making his debut in the Moorhuhn remake with a small cameo while "making love" to another female sheep, the developers at Phenomedia probably figured it was time this Sven character to have a little game franchise of its own. Which turned out to be a pretty good call as Europe embraced the horny sheep Sven, pretty much right after its initial release back in April of 2002.

In fact, they embraced him so much that the developers eventually ended up creating 6 more sequels. I guess gamers sure seem to be having fun in pleasuring sheep. Either that, or Phenomedia happened to discover a long hidden fetish among gamers by accident.

List of all games in the Sven Bømwøllen series (2007 – 2007)

• Sven Bømwøllen
• Sven Zwø
• Sven XXX
• Sven 004
• Sven Kommt!
• Sven Gut zu Vögeln
• Mach's nog einmal, Sven
• Bonus: Android port of Sven Gut zu Vögeln (2014)

Sven Bømwøllen (2002)

The first time we've got to play as Sven, a horny black sheep, and by helping him out on his quest to pleasure and mate with as much female sheep as possible, was when this odd, yet quite the classic, sheep breeding game got released in 2002.

The game's objective and premise is really simple, the player's task is to get down and dirty with as much sheep as possible, while trying not to get caught in the process and within a time limit.

Gameplay & Objective

For the first title in the series, the game gives us an isometric playing field, in which the willingly female sheep are moving around freely while desperately waiting for the player to come and "finish the job". And guess who happens to be the only male sheep around?

Besides the obvious reason they made the protagonist a black sheep and all others white, is to be easily recognizable to the player, I mean, this isn't a Where's Waldo game after all, right? But besides that, the metaphor of being the "black sheep", can also been seen as a small little wink on its own.

Being the only male among a group of horny ladies sounds pretty great, right? So far, so good, however, as soon as the first level starts, the player gets to discover not everyone agrees with your plans and antics, meet the shepherd (called Lars Einnicken) and his loyal dog as they are about to become your biggest enemy in this game (and its many sequels).

The shepherd and his dog will do anything to try and prevent Sven and his "bratwurst of pleasure" from getting anywhere near their beloved all-female herd.

Demonic Sheep, Aliens & Power-ups

When the player fulfils his task and managed to have sexual intercourse (or more like a quickie) with any of the white sheep in the level, various sex animations are shown, before eventually that sheep will disappear from the level after she reached her maximum state of happiness, or in other words - when she reaches her climax.

You can see the current state of happiness of a sheep by looking at the status bar above their heads, which comes in a the shape of a cloud. When she's happy and satisfied, the cloud meter shows a bright shining sun. In a bad case, when their state of happiness is at their lowest because you failed to give them enough "attention", it will show a rainy cloud...

And that's when shit hits the fan!

Failing to provide your task of satisfying a sheep in time, will result in a sheep transforming in some sort of demonic alter-ego. When their state of happiness has hit rock bottom, these sheep will turn all red, grow horns, and will start to go mad as if she's Linda Blair in the Exorcist film.

Meaning, if you somehow managed to get one (or more) of the ladies in your harem herd mad, similar to real-life, you'd better start running! You know the drill... ;)

There are also power-ups you'll get to pick up, some of which are good, some of which will turn against you (for example - after eating a mushroom power-up, the ladies refuse to have sex with Sven because of his bad breath).

Gotta bang 'em all (within a 90 second time limit)

When all white sheep have disappeared from the screen, the player moves on to the next level. There's a catch though, you'll have to make sure you'll finish the job within 90 seconds.

The first game in the series is by far the most simplistic one, the entire game takes place in a meadow by a lake, there are a few bushes and a couple of trees and that's basically it. All the levels are exactly the same.

The only thing that changes each level is the amount of sheep you'll need to take care of. Besides that, there's nothing much more to it and stays more or less the same for the entire game. The fact that Sven Bømwøllen uses an isometric view instead of a top down view in the later games, makes the controls of Sven Bømwøllen pretty clumsy and frustrating at times.

Luckily, this is far from the last thing we'll be hearing from our protagonist Sven, as the many sequels fixed a lot of the issues this game has.

Oh, almost forgot! There are also flying saucers and aliens. Be sure to avoid them because they like to abduct anyone or anything walking around on Earth and well, considering the nature of this game, you're probably going to end up with an anal probe.

Sven Zwo (2002)

Nostalgia made me forget how bad those controls of the original game actually were, luckily for the fans of Sven, this sequel switched from the original isometric gameplay to a top down view, therefore, highly improving the controls and gameplay in general. A great decision on the developers part.

If you've never played any of these games and feel like you want to give it a try - skip the original one, and jump straight into this sequel, it's such a massive improvement in comparison.

This sequel from 2003 also fixes another main issue of the original – changing the scenery.

Unlike the original Sven game in which each level was the same, in Sven Zwo each level is different, which also includes different themes, settings and locations, adding more and different animals, enemies, power-ups, all of which make this second title a lot more fun to play (preventing the game from becoming too repetitive).

Another thing worth mention is the fact that apparently in Sven Zwo, his "love interest" has expended quite a bit as well in little under a year. Suddenly, Sven has become quite the experimental type. Nobody at the farm, seems to be safe from Sven's hard Willy. Oh well, who are we to judge?

Who would have thought that Sven would turn out to be such a romantic person sheep?

It seems like Sven has also been reading and learning the Kamasutra book, which clearly shows due to the many different sex animations added to Sven Zwo.

Additional sex animations of Sven shaggin' sheep isn't the only thing that's been added to this sequel, the amount of extra and many new power-ups make the game in gernal, a lot more fun to play too.

This time around, power-ups hold much more variety in terms of functionality. For starters, there are power-ups which will help the player to move around faster, but there's also power-ups such as a bone, which will distract enemies like the shepherd's dog from chasing you.

Sven XXX (2003)

Sven XXX, the third instalment in the series, and got released in December 2003. Sven XXX is more or less the same as the the previous title and doesn't add that much additional features to it. In essence, the game feels more like an add-on or bonus level-pack than an entire new game.

The only big difference in Sven XXX in comparison to its predeccessors are the locations and themes of the levels. In Sven's third adventure, Sven will be banging the sheep (and other animals) all the way back in the stone age, but also on a chicken farm, the North Pole, and even "making love" on various intergalactic planets invaded by aliens and much more.

One small fun additional feature this title adds in terms of gameplay, is that you'll get to control and play as one of the enemies such as the shepherd or an alien during bonus levels.

Oh, and do you remember I mentioned that odd videogame title Lederzwerge, which featured gay dwarves? Well, these leather-wearing dwarves made their first entrance in Sven XXX, before Phenomedia decided these little guys were worthy of having their own "little" videogame title.

One such game wasn't quite enough according to the developers, they doubled down and went balls-deep into publishing three games in the Lederzwerge series, including a "Dance Dance Revolution" clone.

One small thing to note - I guess Phenomedia wasn't that proud of the end result as they've never mentioned the existence of the Lederzwerge games on their official website.

* Screenshot of the lederzwege.de website (archived in 2004)

The wayback machine doesn't lie though, see the screenshot above. At the bottom of this archived domain, you'll see the link to the Phenomedia.de website, as well as a link to the official Sven games website... Busted, you perverts! ;)

Sven 004 (2004)

Sven embarks on yet another kinky adventure? Yes sir! Guess who's back on his mission to provide happiness to the entire female herd? His name is Bømwøllen, Sven Bømwøllen... And he returns for more action in "Sven 004", which got released in September 2004.

Get it? 007, James Bond, anyone?

While Sven 004 remains loyal to the original gameplay of the franchise, it does introduce a few new features which we hadn't seen so far.

In the first 3 Sven games, a level would simply fit the entire screen, in Sven 004 on the other hand, the player gets introduced to much larger levels for the first time.

Now you'll be able to explore a level while the camera follows the player around, and thus, 004 gets rid of the limitations that come with only being able to craft levels which needed to be able to fit on a single screen. In other words – the biggest change in the fourth instalment of the Sven franchise is the variety in level design, which definetly helps shake things up for the series by adding a new layer of exploration to the mix.

The second new feature this game provides is that Sven also needs to find the exit spot once he has shagged all the sheep in that level, in order to proceed to the next level. Of course, this needs to be done before the time limit of once again, 90 seconds, has been reached.

The last big major new feature is a brand new game mode in which you'll get to play as the shepherd's dog instead of Sven. When you play as the dog, your goal is to lure the herd of sheep onto the road so that they'll get hit by the cars passing by.

Just kidding... Your goal is of course to make sure you'll lead all the sheep safely across the road and avoid getting hit by cars and other obstacles that might be in your way. That being said, my first explanation was a lot more fun to play out though.

Sven Kommt (2005) & Sven Gut zu Vögeln (2006)

By this time, Sven has pretty much seen it all, as he has been fucking sheep pretty much all over the entire planet, as well as through various different time-era's and even had plenty of sex in different galaxies, far, far away. What's next in store for our wooly buddy Sven, if there is any?

Well, maybe it's time for a change? That's what the developers team of Phenomedia must had been thinking, and I agree, after Sven 004, there wasn't much things left to add to improve the original games.

In such case, what do you do? Phenomedia's answer to that question would be to simply take the same previous formula (aka having sexual intercourse with all the female sheep), and apply that to a completely different type of game genre... and it will all feel like a brand new experience again for the player, and to them - it will keep the cash flow going forward.

Platformer Gameplay

Hopping on moving platforms and dick-craving sheep? Sven does Dallas does platformer!

The two final games in the Sven game franchise offer a completely different style of gameplay, switching things up from top view style gameplay to good old fashioned side-scrolling action.

The premise remains the same as all previous games - in order to beat each level, the player needs to satisfy all of the sheep before the countdown clock runs out time. To do so, Sven has to make sure to avoid all the enemies. Beware of all the dogs walking around in the level, as well as all other enemies such as bees or obstacles like electric lines you'd better avoid by turning off the power first, in order to succeed.

Of course, there's also all the other regular elements you'll expect from a platformer game – such as hopping from moving platform to another, collection candy for bonus points, or make use of jumpers to reach all those naughty wet sheep, which you wouldn't be able to reach otherwise.

As a big fan of side-scrolling platformers myself, "Sven Kommt" and its follow-up "Sven Gut zu Vögeln", both definitely are not on my favorites list, to say the least.

That being said, you don't get to play a platform game involving sex with sheep every day, which gives these titles some sort of entertainment value and does make these games fun enough to be worth "finishing" at least once or twice.

Another thing worth pointing out and which deserves some credits, are the unique graphics and looks of these games. It's all so over the top bright and colourful, topping it all off with a way too happy theme song, giving the overall presentation of the game, a somewhat unique appearance and not to mention, an overall very cutesy-vibe and looks.

Speaking of graphics and sprites, by making use of pre-rendered 2.5D sprites and tiles, gives these final 2 Sven games a bit of a 3D look and feel to it. To be honest, I think all the visuals actually match with the game pretty well and does really help the games to stand out from the thousands of other platformer games that got released throughout the years. However, in terms of gameplay, it's seriously lacking any interesting elements. It's just a very basic platformer, nothing more, nothing less.

While the game certainly doesn't belong among the greatest side-scrolling games of all-time, it does have its charm, visually. For the "sheep-lovers" among us which completely disagree, I've got good news for you!

Somehow still craving for more platformer action, even after beating all the 30 levels of Sven Kommt? For those gamers, there's still the 2006 sequel called "Sven Gut zu Vögeln" to complete, offering yet another 30 additional and brand new levels (with fresh new tilesets).

Sven does Android? (Mobile and tablet port)

Debbie might have done Dallas, In 2014, Sven did Android! Sven Gut zu Vögeln got ported to Android, which allows you to play this classic sidescroller on your smart phone or tablet for some good old fashioned sheep-fucking fun times, and of course – have yourself a big fat dose of nostalgia.

Sadly, I have to disappoint those that were planning to play this one on their Android boxes or Android TV devices, Roku or Fire TV stick, since this port can only be played using the on-screen (touch screen) controls and doesn't support any other Dpad controllers, nor a bluetooth or wired USB keyboard.

Wanna play Sven Gut zu Vögeln on your Android phone or tablet? The APK (app file) can be downloaded from the Amazon App store entirely free of charge, enjoy!

Mach's noch einmal, Sven (2007)

By now, the developers probably thought – "Mmmm, can we milk this even further? One last round to generate a quick buck?". The answer is yes. In 2007, the developers came up with the most original idea and concept they could possibly come up with, a little trick they've borrowed from Hollywood...

Let's craft a remake!

The final title in the franchise called "Mach's noch einmal, Sven", which translates to "Do it once more", would turn out to become the true final entry of the series.

In essence, this 2007 release is pretty much a remake of the original games but with updated graphics, switching from the cartoony-look to 2.5D style graphics, giving the game a bit more of a 3D-ish look. The game also returns to its roots by having the entire level fit on one screen.

Other then visual changes, the final game on this list really is just a remake and doesn't add much new elements to it.

If you haven't played any of the previous games yet, this one might be a good choice, other than that, this remake isn't really worth buying in case you're already familiar with any of the older Sven games.

Collections and Level-packs

But wait, there's more! I've got good news for the die-hard sheep fans among us as most of the mentioned game titles above, were released in different versions – XS, XL and XXL.

With the XS versions being distributed as freeware demo's and only contained a small amount of levels, the XL version being the regular edition and the XXL versions were essentially additional level packs, often bundled with a few small bonus perks such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers.

The XXL versions offer even more levels for the player to beat, and more sheep desperately in need of Sven's "care".

The good shepherds at Phenomedia sure weren't holding back in terms of trying to "milk" their cash sheep cash cow to its fullest potential, as a result, Phenomedia also distributed various physical releases of Sven game collections and packs on CD-ROM as well. I must say, this was a pretty common business strategy back in those days.

Sven even has his own book called "The Art Of Sven", written by Sven Schafer and Gotz Neuhaus. The book is a "making of" (or to quote the book's cover - "Das grosse making of") and showcases, for example, a lot of early concept art of all the in-game characters.

The book offers a nice little peak into the production behind these spicy adult games. In total, the "The Art Of Sven" features 62 pages of fun trivia, facts, art and assets from the Sven-games franchise.

Where to get a physical copy??

I started searching for second hand copies on market places such as Ebay at first, but a quick Google search led me to discover that brand new, sealed copies of the Sven videogames on CD/DVD discs are still being sold today. It gets even better - they are sold really cheap.

In case you're living in Europe, these are the best deals I could find, including low shipping costs:

• Sven Cømplete (all 7 games)
  €5 @ Mediamarkt.de
• Mach's noch einmal, Sven
  €6.48 @ Amazon.de
• Buy used: Sven, Die ersten 10 Jahre
  €1.37 @ Amazon.de

Summary

Whether you loved or hated these Sven games back in the day, in the end, I think we can all agree on one thing – that sheep is one hell of a hard-working mothahfucka, for sure. Imagine having to satisfy about 20 soaking wet ladies, craving for your hard rod, and you must be able to "finish the job" in little under 90 seconds, now that requires some serious skills...

Skills which likely even the most well-trained men like Seymore Butts or Super Man himself, wouldn't be able to pull off. But for our German friend Sven Bømwøllen over here? That doesn't seem to bother him one bit.

I find it fascinating that a company had the balls to develop not just one game, but went on to develop an entire franchise based upon the simple and not exactly "suitable for work" type concept, of having sexual intercourse with sheep. Let that sink in for a minute.

Was it all an immature joke or smart marketing plan? The answer doesn't really matter. In the end, it all payed off for them, and as a result and thanks to Phenomedia, a star was born and millions of people, mostly casual gamers, had a ton of fun by joining Sven on his "romantic" quests.

I'll drink to that, my crazy, sheep-loving beer and bratwurst lovin' friends from Germany! Cheers!

Or better yet... Prost!

Speaking of Germans, Phenomedia wasn't the only game studio from Germany that would develop adult themed games. During those same years, another German game studio (called Redfire Software) would publish even much more spicier, odd, little porn games.

Got you curious? Be sure to check out our in depth article covering all the adult games by Redfire Software, in case you'd like to learn about some more wild videogames and smut from Germany with titles such as Patti Pain's Bondage Poker, Dick Sucks: Juicy Pussy Club, Erotica Island and Terror In Titfield.