ANDFrom the name you might expect this to be a game about herding sheep, but it’s much stranger than that. are Sheep, but they’re fluffy flying sheep that float behind you as you ride on the back of a giant, colorful bird. You occasionally shear them for wool to knit new jumpers and pom-pom hats, making the sheep look like naked purple flying sausages with eyes. But the bulk of your flock is actually sky fish. Or are they fish? Some are sinuous like eels, some squawk like chickens, some are feathered whales. As stated, it’s pretty weird.
Your job in Flock is to fill out a field guide full of these big-eyed, flying-fish-like creatures, locating them in the wild and then identifying them from brief and variably obvious written clues (“flexible proboscis,” “vertical stripes,” “often mistaken for a noisy radish”). They all resemble marine life through a gently surreal pop-art filter, but they’re so well drawn that I developed a sense for the differences between a Cosmet and a Bewl, Thrips and Rustics. Some camouflage themselves among weeds or leaves, some flee from your approach, some just sit there sunning themselves on rocks and clucking. You find whistlers that teach your bird a song, and then you can collect them pied piper-style in a cloud of creatures that follows in your wake.
I’m not very good at charming the creatures yet; I never mastered the rhythm, and my bird often scares them away with an off-key cry rather than ushering them into the flock. am I’m good at finding them. The flight is taken care of by you: the bird automatically flies around trees and moss-covered rocks, so you’re free to observe your surroundings and listen for the trills and chirps that betray the presence of an undiscovered fish-bird. I was guided by sound as often as by sight: the nature-inspired soundscape is, along with the striking art and tender, witty writing, one of Flock’s standout features.
I enjoyed the two afternoons I spent with Flock; I wish there had been more. A couple of really interesting little environmental puzzles made me want to find others hidden in the highlands. Most creatures can be found fairly easily, but only a few required a pleasant deduction from a single sentence in the field guide. Once or twice, a creature in my environment pointed me to another or helped me look for something, but most of them don’t do anything other than follow you around. I couldn’t help but imagine a slightly more ambitious version of this game, where key beasts granted interesting abilities, with races or challenges to give you something to do with your friends once you’d completed the field guide. But after less than five hours, I’d done everything there was to do.
Despite that, I still fire up my Steam Deck just to fly through the wetlands or moss forest for a few minutes here and there. It’s so relaxing to be out there, and so pleasing to the eye, so endearingly strange that it stands out from the rest.