Counting sheep?

Prompt 1: Describe the central uncertainty in the game.

In the game Counting sheep? , the constantly moving box makes me unsure of victory. The goal is to move the boxes to the right, but the boxes are constantly doing an ellipse shape motion, they're hard to push in the gate and even if they're in the gate, there's a chance that they will fly out themselves. Another uncertainty comes from the lag between my controls as a player and the movement of the sheep. The sheep doesn't immediately follow my cursor, but more like dragged toward it in a fixed highest speed. So the victory requires not my own physical skills, but the correct strategy to push the boxes in the right moment. The tension feels like the thrill of hunting. I have to wait until that right moment to come, and getting that moment right is very rewarding to a player. 

The source of randomness comes also from the moving boxes. They move in the same circular direction, but the track is not fixed, and the boxes collide with each other. So the movement is random, but not so random. Once the player pushed the boxes, the track will be altered as well. This also adds a little complexity in the game.

Prompt 2:

The challenge of the game, though not explicit, seems to be to use the sheep guided by your mouse as a tool to push the flying cubes through a hole from one side of the screen to the other. The sheep has a max velocity so it cannot keep up with speeds of the mouse cursor beyond that max, causing for it to lag behind the cursor making the player anticipate and adjust to this to use the sheep and collide effectively with the squares. This added layer of difficulty whether intended or not, makes the game more challenging than if the sheep were always directly under the cursor. While it doesn't seem entirely predictable, the circular motion of the rectangles isn't totally random either. This makes it possible for the player to predict the relative path of the rectangles, and coupled with their quick velocity makes it just the right amount of doability for it to be frustrating during the act and rewarding upon completion. It should also be mentioned that after successfully managing to push a rectangle to the other side beyond the hole, they don't stop flying around. This means they are still an obstacle while you are trying to capture the remaining rectangles as it could fly out back towards the other side of the hole if not careful and set you back in progress. This feature is probably the most frustrating of all and seems like a deliberate design choice by the designer to thwart the player's progress.