Flock Review: Gotta Charm ‘Em All

Flock

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Platform reviewed on: PlayStation 5

Pros

• Cozy gameplay in a colorful world full of whimsical details
• Wide variety of adorable, unique creatures to discover
• User-friendly gameplay doesn't penalize players for making mistakes
• Hint system can help players find the required critters

Cons

• On-screen text is far too tiny by default
• It sometimes isn't clear what players should do next

ESRB Age Rating: Everyone
ESRB Interactive Elements: User Interact

Review code provided by the publisher.

My first experience with Flock came at Summer Game Fest in June 2024. While I only had around 30 minutes to demo the creature collection game at the event, that was more than enough time to draw me in and make me want to keep playing long after my meeting was over. Thankfully, Flock is now available on consoles and PC, and the full experience didn’t disappoint.

Flock takes players to the colorful Uplands, where a mysterious phenomenon known as the Cloudsurge has left the land covered in dense clouds. Players will become a Bird Rider tasked with helping their Aunt Jane, a zoologist, document the creatures that live in the Uplands. As players document these critters, the clouds will slowly descend, giving them access to more and larger areas, each with a unique geography.

Flock features a few dozen creatures to document, but these aren’t normal animals like foxes or bears. Instead, they’re original creations that are split into 12 families with clever names like Bewls, Sprugs, and Baffins.

These animals come in a variety of unique shapes, colors, and patterns, and also exhibit a variety of behaviors. While many of them casually fly around the game’s environments, others swim on the water’s surface, lay on flat rocks, or even cling to tree branches. Some make their homes out in the open where they’re easily spotted, while others are great at camouflage or can be found sticking partially out of the ground.

Players will search for these critters as they ride on the back of a bird they can customize at the beginning of the game. As players choose the direction to fly, the bird will automatically speed up, slow down, and change altitude to avoid obstacles in its path. Players can also press a button for a quick speed boost. This movement setup takes very little time to get used to, and it makes the experience feel more than a bit like Flower, a 2009 release from thatgamecompany that allows players to control a wisp of wind and use it to bloom flowers (that game’s also fantastic, by the way).

When players come across an unidentified creature, they can lock the camera onto it, giving them the chance to observe its appearance, behavior, and surroundings. From there, they’re asked to identify the creature by choosing from a list of possible options, each with an associated description, such as “Very scruffy, pretends to be a fruit,” or “Large yellow spots on top side.”

While most of the descriptions make the correct choice quite obvious, some are more challenging to pick out. However, players don’t need to worry about choosing the incorrect identification, as Aunt Jane will give them another chance if they guess incorrectly. If players choose the wrong option twice, Jane will simply identify the creature for them without any penalty.

Early on in Flock, a group of Burgling Bewls (mischievous thief critters) will steal a set of whistles that can be used by Bird Riders to charm creatures, causing them to follow along behind their bird. These Bewls will then hide in meadows scattered throughout the Uplands, which is where the game’s flying sheep come in (yes, we said flying sheep).

Players start with a single sheep that can fly along behind their bird, and they’ll have the chance to collect more over time. Sheep can be sent to meadows to eat the grass and reveal the hiding Bewls, allowing players to recover their stolen loot. In some cases, that’s one of the aforementioned whistles. In other cases, players will retrieve charms that increase the maximum size of their flock (the group of critters that will follow along behind them) or clothing patterns that can be used to create new clothing for their Bird Rider (using the wool they shear from their sheep, naturally).

There’s a different whistle for each of the game’s 12 creature families, and players need to collect a family’s whistle before they can charm any of its critters. The charming process asks players to first “lock on” to a creature and then move their bird so that it’s just the right distance away from the target before triggering the whistle’s song. If players are too close or too far away, they risk spooking the creature, causing it to flee (though they can attempt to chase it down and try again). If players have trouble charming creatures, they can turn on an “Easy Charming” setting in the menu.

As creatures are charmed, they’ll automatically join the group flying behind the player’s Bird Rider. Eventually, this group will fill up, causing new creatures to replace older ones as they’re charmed. Players can prevent their favorite creatures from leaving by marking them as favorites in the game’s menu. Here, they can also freely change their flock’s lineup by choosing from the creatures they’ve previously charmed.

While Flock’s gameplay setup is quite simple, actually finding and documenting every creature proves quite challenging. For one, the game utilizes a day and night cycle, with some creatures only showing up at certain times (we particularly loved the glowing Thrips, which appear at night and shine like bright Christmas lights when viewed from a distance). Some creatures are also more timid than others, which means players may scare them away as they attempt to move in to identify them.

If players need help finding one of the required critters, the game’s creature guide can provide a hint as to their location or behavior, which helps ease the overall difficulty and prevents the game from becoming frustrating.

While players are free to search for creatures at their own pace, the game will also guide them forward using quests. At one point later in the story, we were left without a quest and confused as to how to progress. However, if we had paid closer attention to Aunt Jane’s clues as she talked to us on our journey, our destination would have been more clear (that is, once we made progress, the previous interactions made much more sense). Still, we would have preferred a bit more hand-holding in this area as we can see other players also being confused.

Another noteworthy issue relates to the game’s UI, which has terribly small text by default. The text size on most windows can be boosted significantly using an option in the game’s menu, but the text related to the game’s grassy meadows isn’t affected by this toggle and remains hard to read. This doesn’t feel like a deal breaker, but it’s definitely something to know before going in.

Even with these minor issues, Flock is a wonderful game bursting with whimsy and delight. Everything from the way the bird happily learns each family’s song when players recover a stolen whistle to the adorable creature noises (like trills) – every element combines to form a charming experience that’s easy to become lost in for hours at a time, and one that absolutely earns our recommendation.

Flock

Release Date: July 16, 2024

Digital Only

• WindowsBuy
• PlayStation 5Buy
• Xbox Game PassBuy
• Xbox SeriesBuy

Editor’s Note: Flock supports cooperative multiplayer gameplay, allowing players to fly around the environment together with each player on their own bird. We didn’t test this feature during our time with Flock, so we did not factor it into our review.