How Flock’s Weird and Wonderful Zoology Was Inspired by Moths, Fruit, and Local Sights
Developers Ricky Haggett and Richard Hogg delve into the design decisions and unusual origins of Flock’s Gleebs, Bewls, Drupes, and other entertaining creatures.
Posted 5 months ago
“Flying potatoes with eyes and nice colors.” It’s far from the most flattering description, but that’s how developer and artist Richard Hogg sees most of the creatures he designed for Flock. And in playing the chilled out, co-operative game of exploration and creature collection that he worked on with developer Hollow Ponds, it’s hard to disagree.
Flock’s almost avians are unquestionably silly. Watching them zip between trees or drift across grasslands, it’s nigh impossible not to giggle at their spud-like shapes and gormless expressions. But that simplicity doesn’t mean they were crafted with little consideration. Each one has unique behaviors and patterns, the observation of which is fundamental to filling an in-game creature guide.
To help furnish Flock’s critter compendium with extra insight, we spoke with Hogg alongside lead developer and Hollow Ponds founder Ricky Haggett. The pair divulged how they came to categorize the creatures they’d created, the unlikely inspirations behind their names, and why some of the game’s groupings are intentionally designed to catch you out.
Flock's landscapes are beautiful to traverse at all times of day (and night).
©Hollow Ponds / Restart
In Flock, the trill of an unknown creature is an invitation. Successfully track its origin, and you’ll have the chance to observe the being that made it. By noting features, motions, and sounds, you can attempt to identify which of the game’s 12 main families it belongs to. It’s a bit like filling a sporting sticker album, but where all the players are aliens, and you’ve only been given vague descriptions of their team kits and motifs. Placing each entry is a puzzle of its own. But that immediate game of identification wasn’t initially part of the process that Haggett and Hogg devised.
Many early sketches made it into the final game.
©Richard Hogg / Hollow Ponds
“[Hogg] drew loads of things, and then we spent quite a long time whittling that into 12 families,” says Haggett, “And we did such a good job that people started to [categorize them] in playtests anyway. They were like: ‘Oh, I reckon that's probably a Gleeb.’ There was no gameplay to support it, and it just felt like, oh, we're missing a trick here. We could just let people figure this stuff out and do the identification there. When we came up with that idea, we were pretty sure it was gonna work. … That was the big turning point: we should just make identification a thing the player does.”
Those core families, however, proved surprisingly challenging to assign. Hogg describes himself as a lapsed birdwatcher – albeit one who still heads out each year in search of the elusive Nightingale, or the ‘Aphex Twin of birds.’ As such, he’s comfortable with identifying interesting animals. But this time, they were the ones in charge of classification. Some familial bunchings were obvious from Hogg’s sketches, but others proved nebulous. The team had to make seemingly arbitrary decisions as to which boxes borderline creatures should inhabit. Those overlaps might sound like a game design problem. But to both Hogg and Haggett, they’re a welcome reflection of what we see in the world around us.
“We like [the idea] that it feels a bit like nature, where real categorization is a bit wonky,” Haggett says.
Filling your Creature Guide is a core goal.
©Hollow Ponds / Restart
“Like frogs and toads – taxonomical anomalies,” expounds Hogg. “It’s like the word shellfish, right? It means lots of things that aren't related to each other. And there's a family of the creatures in the game that are most like shellfish. That's definitely true of them. There's some that look a bit like snails, but then there's one that's like a cuttlefish. Although actually, snails and cuttlefish are quite closely related, but you know what I mean!”
Real-world animal families are notoriously muddled. Ask a group of taxonomists to detail precisely what a fish is, and you’d better have a long drink poured in advance. But when presented with potential classification pitfalls, would players understand and accept this intrinsic messiness?
“We did have some negative play testing,” admits Hogg. “The Gleebs are a weird one, because they're all things that are kind of birdlike, but in different ways. Some have wings and some don't. One looks like a whale. And then there's another family of creatures that are very much like whales. So that Gleeb could really be in either of those families. And you know what? It's messy. Taxonomy's messy in the real world, and it is in our game as well.”
Richard Hogg's favorite birdsong
Flock features plenty of fabulous animal calls, but what real-life song stands out to its developers? Hogg’s favorite is unwavering: the loudmouthed Nightingale.
“It's like a mythical creature, especially now they're so rare,” says Hogg. “I try and hear one every year. Around my birthday at the beginning of May I go to a place where there’s a pretty good chance of hearing one.
“It never ceases to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I never heard one growing up because I'm from the Midlands, and they don't go that far north. It's only since living in the south that I get to hear them. And it's just something else, the song. They're like the Aphex Twin of birds, you know? I absolutely love them.”
Many may have been tempted to cut and compartmentalize their creatures cleanly; to ensure that the puzzle can always be solved. Instead, Hogg and Hollow Ponds took the approach of offering gentle reassurance. Aside from a small sound and message of minor disappointment, Flock has no tangible punishment for choosing incorrectly. If anything, you’re more likely to get a word of support.
“We ended up adding a thing so that when you get that one wrong, [the in-game zoologist] Jane's like: ‘Yeah, lots of people get this wrong,’ as a way of acknowledging that this is just the nature of this beast rather than a thing that you've made a mistake on,” Haggett says.
“Even though we make games that are quite weird, we like those kinds of realism,” says Hogg. “Where this is how this thing would work in the real world, so let's make it like that in our game. And sometimes it probably makes life harder in terms of straightforward, easy-to-understand gameplay. I would be the first to put my hand up and say yeah, that's probably true. But it's not all about utility, right? If that was the case, we'd be making really boring games. It's kind of an artifact of the fact that we make things that are, I guess, a bit esoteric, and we're not gonna change.”
Hohokum players will recognize Hogg's style clearly.
©Richard Hogg / Hollow Ponds
Before observing a creature, you first need to find them. Listening to Flock’s chorus of calls as you carve arcs through the air is mesmerizingly soothing, but those songs also serve as an important gameplay device. To find the right balance, the team enlisted the aid of sound designer Dan Pugsley. His time concocting the (much more realistic) animal sounds of Alba: A Wildlife Adventure brought valuable experience. But Flock’s imagined fauna also demanded a less grounded approach.
“There were basically three categories: There was musical instruments that you mess around with; human voices that you mess around with; real-world animals that you mess around with,” Haggett recalls. “Dan threw the net pretty wide at the start, and there were definitely some that we immediately rejected as being too silly. There were some that were just too obviously what the animal is. But in the middle there was a really complicated mess, and it took a long time for us to shuffle sounds into creatures but keep the families making sense.
“There was also a lot of work in the tech of [how] creatures make sounds. Because you want that rhythm where the creatures aren't all just singing randomly, it's almost like they're singing in their little time slots. So if you hear a creature, you can wait a semi-predictable amount of time before it will sing again. It's almost like the creatures are singing backwards and forwards to each other. Which is, behind the scenes, kind of what's happening.”
Classification is only half the job of a digital taxonomist, however. To complete their catalog, Hogg and Haggett also needed to give names to their creations. Here, they drew on a range of sources varied enough to complete a round of 20 Questions.
“I made a massive Google doc really early on, where I came up with loads of creature names,” says Hogg, “There are lots of sources of inspiration, but the two main [ones] are British moths and Australian birds.
We can see the makings of an Emperor Cosmet already.
©Richard Hogg / Hollow Ponds
“Rustic is a type of moth. [As are] quite a lot of the appellations like splendid, or superior, or cinereus. Weird words for colors. You get loads of moths that have those interesting words like emerald, and that was a big influence.”
“One of [the families], the Bewls, came from a place called Bewl Water,” Hagett says. “Which is between Hastings, where Dick lives, and London, where I live. It's just a place you drive past on the road!”
“I think that's the only one that's a place name,” continues Hogg. “And Drupe! In real life a drupe is a type of fruit. I think an avocado is a drupe. It's fruit with one large stone.”
“Peaches!” Haggett chimes in.
“Peaches, apricots, things like that,” continues Hogg. “Actually I don't think an avocado is a drupe. Maybe it is, I don't know!”
The result of all these elements are creatures and a world which might look fantastical, but feel connected to the reality of nature. A land Haggett hopes will elicit emotions of curiosity and relaxation. Or at the very least provide, as Hogg puts it: “Just a nice place to be with your friends.”
Our thanks to Richard Hogg and Ricky Haggett for taking the time to speak with us about their work on Flock.
