Gridrunner++ is a shoot 'em up written by Jeff Minter for Pocket PC, then for Windows. It has since been ported to Mac OS X and iOS. It was only available as shareware for download from the Llamasoft website, with a registration fee of £5. It was followed-up by Gridrunner Revolution (2009) and Gridrunner iOS (2012). Gameplay The player controls a spacecraft with the mouse. A series of enemies appear and attack the craft; the player must destroy all enemies on the stage to complete it. Enemies that are part of the current stage but have not yet begun to attack can be seen as glowing lines in the background. The player's ship fires bullets upwards continuously, which are used to attack the enemies. If the player's ship contacts an enemy, it is immediately destroyed. Small circular "pods" may be left on the stage in the locations where enemies are killed; some stages include special enemies which drop pods directly onto the stage in lines. Pods can be destroyed by shooting them. They destroy the player's ship if the player collides with them, and if left unattended eventually explode sending out lines in the four cardinal directions. These lines are also fatal to the player's ship. Finally, at intermittent moments the "XY zapper" is activated: four sets of lines begin to converge on a particular location on the screen. When they do, the player's ship is destroyed if it is aligned with that location either horizontally or vertically. As the player scores points, sheep (referred to as "sheepies") begin to drop from the top of the screen. These sheepies have several different effects: Collecting sheepies increases the firepower of the player's ship, and enables it to fire backwards. Collecting a tenth sheepie activates "the pill" - a smaller sheep which moves around the screen destroying enemies on the player's behalf. Normally, all sheepies are lost when a new stage begins, but collecting a sheepie in the short hang-time between the end of the stage and the start of the next will cause the first sheepie on the new stage to flash, indicating that collecting it will restore the sheepie count from the previous stage. This is referred to as a "Continuity Sheepie". When the player's ship is destroyed, the falling wreckage can be steered, and if the centre point of the wreckage lands on an uncollected sheepie then the player's