REVIEW / Flock (Xbox)

Flock hit the video game community with a splash that has people calling it the cozy game of the summer. From developer Hollow Ponds, this bite-sized open-world game about building your flock and filling up your “Creature Guide” delivers in its chill, explorative, collect-em-all vibes.

Story

Although fairly barebones, this small delight does have a storyline for you to follow, giving you purpose in your endeavors. Think Pokemon minus the battles or many, many towns. This game is about collecting airborne creatures, observing them to add to your Creature Guide, and discovering new areas. After you’ve enjoyed some minimal, but adorable, customization options for yourself and your bird that will act as your mount for the entirety of the game, it’s time to go visit your Aunt Jane. Like Professor Oak, she gives you the job of filling up your Creature Guide to help expand her research as a zoologist. After a brief tutorial on how to capture creatures, you’re off to the races.

Aside from gathering research information for your Aunt Jane, the other reason she enlisted your help is because there’s been a cloud surge stranding her research students. Apparently, you’re known for having a now-scarce skill in flying your bird, making you a unique candidate to navigate the cloud surge. Early on, a rare and special creature will join your flock, and will lower the clouds a bit, revealing a new area. This will lead you to search out other special creatures that can further lower the clouds, revealing more areas with different biomes and creatures for you to explore.

Outside of the creature-aspect of the story, is gathering all of your Aunt’s stolen items. Right at the start of the game, Burgling Bewls run off with all of your Aunt’s whistles–which you will need to find in order to gain the ability to charm different creature families–as well as baubles, and knitting patterns. Baubles allow you to increase the total number of creatures you can have in your flock, while knitting patterns provide you with more clothing options to purchase. Retrieve the loot, build your flock, and fill up your Creature Guide and you’ll find yourself immersed in this delightful little trip through curious, creature-filled lands.

I was surprised when the credits rolled, honestly, as I’d become completely invested in all of the previous activities listed. I found it odd that I still had an undiscovered family as well as one unretrieved whistle–both of which are part of what appear to be the main quest. The game ends unexpectedly due to a specific retrieved loot; I was hoping for more to explore, but luckily the game does allow you to dive right back in. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if Hollow Grounds has some DLCs or updates planned to add more areas or creatures.

Setting

Despite the simple graphics, Flock delivers on a gorgeous landscape, with different biomes and vibrant colors. A fictional land that starts off in high altitude and eventually goes lower and lower doesn’t lack in diversity and helps keep the player motivated to progress through the game. When I realized I’d unveiled the last new area, I was disappointed; I wanted to see what could come next from underneath the clouds, knowing it would be something different from the last.

The time of day changes, as well, causing glow-in-the-dark creatures to stand out. One of the first things I did was add three Common Bewls to my flock, because despite their name, they had a glow that stood out amongst your flock. Other creatures can be day-time-specific as well, adding a necessary attentiveness to sighting and capturing them. The diversity of creatures doesn’t just apply to time of day, but also the different areas you’ll discover as you progress, making it that much more exciting each time the clouds lower. This small, expanding world helps to make this little gem the relaxing, fun, pretty delight that it is.

Gameplay

Right away, you’ll find that flying around on your bird is seamless and easy. Your bird intuitively adjusts its height and avoids obstacles; all you have to worry about is the direction you’re going. The landscape is also filled with interactives for you and your bird; successive structures to fly through and boost your speed, even giant holes that have their own wind vortexes that’ll launch you and get you where you’re going at record speed. With no time wasted in adjusting to your flying companion, you can immediately get to work on building your flock and your Creature Guide.

Capturing members to add to your flock is unique and easy to get the hang of. It’s a bit like a lasso technique but is technically through the use of a family-specific whistle. Your bird will automatically echo the necessary whistle-tone, while you worry about matching up with the perfect range required to “charm” the creature. Be careful, though, as you can spook or even run out of time to catch your new friend. Some creatures require multiple attempts at a well-in-range whistle, and others even have a time limit.

There’s never a time where the difficulty of catching a creature reaches levels of feeling as though you’ve encountered a rare, elusive creature. In fact, even the rare, special creatures are easy to catch–once you’ve done the needed steps to reach them. These creatures are one of a kind and are immediately locked to your flock–which is a good thing, as they’re gorgeous and you will definitely want to flaunt them. Your flock also includes an unexpected addition: sheep. That’s right, in this game full of made-up flying creatures, there are still sheep. Not only are there sheep, but there are hills of grass for them to graze; you’ll want to drop them off at every one that you find, as this is how you advance through the game.

Eating grass will cause your sheep to grow wool that you can eventually sheer and use to trade for new clothing to spruce up your character. Along with items needed to progress through the game, the sheep will also sometimes find you new knitting patterns, expanding your clothing options to trade for. This game is easy, relaxing, and offers lots of unique creatures for you to find. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not without its few flaws.

Flock has some room for improvement

One simple change that I think could make all the difference is including researcher requests in your quest log. The quest log in this game is simple–you press LB, or the corresponding button for the platform you’re on, and if you have a present task, it’ll appear in the top-left corner of your screen. Whether it’s to go pick up your sheep after they’ve finished grazing, or a specific task for Aunt Jane that will progress the story along, it’ll pop up for as long as you hold the button to remind you of what you need to do.

Researcher requests do not appear, however. This makes it easy to forget what they requested–they will ask you to show them a specific creature in exchange for wool–as the names of these creatures are, of course, fictional. A Slumbering Rustic is not a term I’m going to easily remember. Not only that, but there are multiple researchers scattered throughout the map. I was able to remember their names usually, but not their exact locations–the map for some reason forewent showing their names, providing only their cute little headshots. This made completing these tasks any other time than immediately after they are requested, a bit more troublesome than I would like.

The map in general is fairly intuitive but is also missing the ability to place a waypoint when you have the filter on for each creature’s first discovery area. So, if you want to place a waypoint to go find that creature, you oddly have to turn off the filter telling you where it is. Small oddities, but they definitely are easy fixes. Until then–if the developers do consider them changes that would benefit the player without compromising their game–it’s all fairly easy to work around. The other flaws come with your interactions with the creatures.

When you discover a new creature, you have to go through an observation process to properly identify them. This aspect I like; it’s just a multiple-choice question with unique descriptions of different species from that family, and choosing the wrong one has no penalty. Some of the descriptions will give you a laugh, even. My issue with it is what happens after; time doesn’t pause during the observation. The creature is actively moving, and ideally once you’ve accurately identified it, if you have the proper whistle, you’d like to capture it.

Unfortunately, the creature can be far away or even nowhere to be found afterwards; it makes sense that a player would want to identify and immediately capture the creature. Ideally, the creature would stay somewhere in the vicinity once you start observation, instead of leaving the player empty-handed after a new discovery. Of course, this is a small qualm, as sometimes the creatures are moseying about a pasture, not doing much of anything, and are right there where you want them once you’ve identified them. I did simply find myself disappointed a few times when I completed an identification of a cool looking creature, and it was no longer there for me to add to my flock.

Another small issue is that some creatures require you to delicately approach them until you’re essentially right up next to them for the identification prompt to appear. Some unique methods of catching creatures–such as needing to chase them until they’re tired out–are explained in brief tutorials, and others simply forgotten and something you need to figure out on your own.

Hands-off gaming can be fun, but when it seems the game wants to provide you tutorials, things like this make you wonder if there’s a glitch rather than you needing to change your technique. Again, not a big deal, but something I found to be an inconvenience more than once. There is a scanning ability that turns out to be a lot more useful and important than it’s implied to be when presented to you. In fact, the tutorial almost makes it seem optional–it’s actually very important for progression and is sometimes the only way to get the identification or charm prompt to appear.

These issues really just come down to a lack of awareness from the developers in what the player may or may not catch on to and could be easily rectified with more specific or additional tutorials. This is not, however, something you need to worry about hindering your overall experience.

Overall

I really, truly loved this game, negligible flaws and all. It’s a quick play–almost too quick, but one you won’t regret. The creatures are unique, with almost nonsense names that you start to familiarize yourself with, and a world with vastly differing areas of biome to explore. The only thing I could truly wish for is more of this game. So, take your time, build your flock, soar through the skies, and enjoy your time in this fictional little world.