Herdling

Vibes

Okomotive makes good games, I got this one because I deeply enjoyed their FAR games and I love creature collector games. I don't think this necessarily is a bad game, but I wouldn't suggest it. Herdling is very similar to OKomotive's other games: Short and sweet, a great soundtrack, beautiful graphics, no text, cinematic shots, and gameplay that feels like a story. Herdling has all those things, but unfortunately it is held back by one thing: the herding mechanic. Which is a shame, because a game about herding has so much potential, and if the mechanic was good this could have been one of their best games. Instead, the herding mechanic ends up feeling less like leading a flock, and more like steering a barge around traffic cones. To enforce this, brushing up against one of these obstacles results in one of your calicorns plummeting to their death or getting disemboweled. To make matters worse, the herd is unresponsive at times, and would often look at me confused as I tried to steer them around boulders or refuse to stop as I spammed the stop whistle. This gets even more stressful later when obstacles can just suddenly appear right in front of you. Often the game would be showing me super large fields and cinematics shots, tempting me to sprint through the fields of flowers. I was so worried about losing my herd I slowly walked through them. Then I would get to the checkpoint, after not seeing a single obstacle, and rather than think: "That was beautiful! " I would think "What a waste of time!" There was a clear conflict in game direction. Do you want the player to be constantly stressed while spending every second watching for danger, or do you want the player to enjoy their freedom and think about the story while enjoying a cinematic shot? It's fine if you want both, but there needs to be a clear delineation between safe and unsafe, otherwise I'm not going to make any assumptions and risk my flock. I didn't hate it, but I didn't enjoy it either.