The Flock is the ambitious first project of Netherlands based Vogelsap. The game bills itself as an asymmetrical multiplayer horror title and tells the story of the titular Flock, a tragically doomed race housed on an alien planet. Players participate in matches of up to five people and will control either one of the limber agile members of the Flock, or a slow moving flashlight wielding creature known as the Carrier.
The game takes a cue from Titanfall or Evolve by completely doing away with the single player experience. There’s a tutorial to get you started but after that you’ll be stuck playing with other people. Although matches are capped at five players the game will let you start with as many as three which is a good thing because I was very rarely able to find a game with more than that. The lower player count didn’t hurt things, all three (yes, you read that right) of the game’s maps feel like they’re sized just right.
So a basic game plays out roughly like so: All players spawn as members of the Flock and race to capture an artifact randomly placed on the map. Once a player successfully grabs the artifact they are morphed into a Carrier. Carriers have a much slower top speed and also lack the ability to jump. Carriers traverse the map wielding a gigantic flashlight and seeking out glowing orbs that will greatly increase their score and move them closer to being the winner of the match. Meanwhile every member of the Flock will hunt down the carrier in an attempt to kill them and take their place.
The Flock can be killed by coming into contact with the beam from the carrier’s flashlight but only if they’re caught while moving. This creates a kind of “red-light, green-light” design where shining your light on an opponent will generally make them freeze in place and attempt to get you the moment you turn your back on them. While there is definitely a feeling of unease while you play as the carrier, I wouldn’t say the game delivers the “unscripted scares” it advertises on its Steam page, mostly because dying doesn’t really have any fanfare, there’s barely even a sound to it, your screen just turns white and you get ready to respawn.
If you’ve heard about The Flock already then you’re probably at least somewhat aware of its unique population system. The developers have had to address issues in the past with news outlets mis-representing their system so I’ll use their words directly from their site:
With each death in the game, one life will be taken from the Flock’s population. When the Flock’s population reaches zero, the game will never be purchasable again. Only players who have The Flock in their Steam library will then go to the next phase and be able to partake in the yet to be announced climactic finale. After the ending, the game will go offline permanently and no longer be playable.
So there you go, you can play the game, but every time you die you’re pushing it further to its permanent ending. Many players were concerned when they heard that The Flock would have a finite amount of time in which to experience its content, but those fears can be easily laid to rest as the game only features about a half hour worth of things to see, after that you’re in the repetition zone. It’s hard to be absolutely certain with the counter but by my math the game’s population counter decreases by somewhere around 900 every thirty minutes. Assuming the game is at the height of its popularity now, that means that at its current rate we would be waiting about 13 years to exhaust the 215,358,979 life countdown and see The Flock’s finale.
There’s an argument to be made to the contrary but my initial impression of the population mechanic is that’s just a gimmick that got this game a lot more publicity than it would have received otherwise. The developers indicate on their website that the population strenghtens the game’s immersion and makes it scarier but I don’t think either one is true. In fact I’d say that watching a countdown in between respawns is the opposite of immersive.
Being light on content isn’t The Flock’s only concern. The game features a collection of bugs that, while small, really have no excuse for being there. Numerous pieces of text are missing from the game and are replaced with “String not found”, I was particularly perturbed by this when trying to change my resolution and discovering that after hitting “apply” once in the settings menu you can no longer set the game back to full screen. The rest of my playthrough of The Flock took place in a windowed view.
I’ve also noticed there are a number of other features that either aren’t mapped to controls properly or maybe just aren’t in the game at all. For example according to the controller map in the menu you can increase or decrease your light output with the bumpers, no such buttons are shown on the keyboard control section, though it doesn’t seem to matter as I don’t see any discernible difference when pressing the buttons on the controller anyway.
At its core The Flock showcases a gameplay premise that despite the potential to be entertaining winds up feeling repetitive and wears out its welcome incredibly fast. Personally I think the team would have been better served tightening up controls, adding maps and game modes, while removing the “limited lives” gimmick entirely. To be frank, the game isn’t done, wasn’t ready for release, and even if it was it’s so bare on content that it’s impossible to argue it’s truly worth the $16.99 asking price. We usually don’t review episodic or early access games, and while this title is neither we do have to make some concessions to the promised finale. There’s a chance Vogelsap can tie everything together and make something truly worth your time, but right now this isn’t it.
This game was reviews using pre-release code, but nothing actually worked until launch, so I guess technically it was just reviewed with launch code provided to us by the publisher.
