The Flock Review

• I paid: £2.99 (Bundle price, normal price: 12.99)
• I expect: 20-30 hours of play
• I rate it: 87/100 if you have others to play it with or 37/100 if you are buying alone
• Story-driven: no
• Demo available: no
• Worth the money only if you have others to play with or if you get it in a bundle, otherwise don't bother

"The Flock is a fresh breath of life into the arena of first person multiplayer gaming. Sadly, its lack of a player base means that you are wasting your money unless you buy it with a group of others. I am one from the latter criterion, and I have loved every minute of the game; I simply wish more people played."

Did you ever play the game statues when you were a child? I did. It was one of those playground games that were only possible as children because you could be anyone’s friend by simply asking them and you could easily form a group to play with. The Flock is essentially a spooky version of that exact game with a few added mechanics. I will talk about the looks, sounds and gameplay before I say anything about the netplay. This is an indie title that attempts to be a lobby multiplayer and I shall leave the netplay until the end on purpose such that it does not colour the whole review.

The game looks so-so. If you look at any screenshot, you might think that the fancy glows and filters make for an appealing package. Take a look at this screenshot, for example.

That’s taken straight from in-game without any post-processing so the game clearly has the potential to look beautiful. Unfortunately, most of the time you are not looking at artily placed statues and camera angles that are dripping with edginess; instead you spend a lot of the game looking at textures which are mediocre and the hands of your character which look – for want of a better description – like two mutated tuna fish. Either that or a little gun which smacks of Portal reject that has a texture looking neither like smooth plastic nor rugged gun metal.

The particle effects are unimpressive at best but at worst actually obscure your sense of direction. One of the best ways to figure out where you need to go is to look for the column of light in the sky so having that column almost completely obscured by smoke and cloud in some instances is questionable design.

Oh, and there's this clipping glitch.

It doesn't affect gameplay and you have to look for it but it's sloppy.

The sound for this game is fantastic. There is little to no music due to the fact that it is inherently a horror game therefore it is riding on the ambient noise a lot of the time. What little of it there is has this beautiful Diablo feel about it that sends me right back to when I was 15 and trying to play hardcore characters, listening to the rogue encampment music over and over. The ambient sounds mimic footsteps and other things that a flock does thereby tricking you into thinking there are spooky things coming to get you when there may actually be nothing there at all. The sound effects themselves are fine. I didn’t have any particular thoughts either way but I am sure a lot of work went into making the cry of the flock sound as it does without it falling flat or making you cringe. It is however a merciful thing that the game plays a sound effect if you are standing in the beam of light. Without this, there would surely be many frustrating deaths from simply not knowing where the cone of light ended and began.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the greatest part of gameplay is simply the playground game of statues. One person is the carrier (of the light artefact) and must achieve objectives in order to “ascend” and escape the living hell that is being one of the flock. The rest of the flock chase the carrier and try to kill them thus taking the artefact for themselves and becoming the new carrier. The carrier can shine light upon the flock in order to burn them away and thereby achieve the objective. The flock can stand still to become “petrified” and immune to the beam of light. They can also drop a decoy statue with which they can exchange places. Flock can call out to one another which identifies their location (to other flock) and attacks the carrier with a scary screen effect, hopefully spooking them into turning around the wrong way.

In order to prevent the carrier from being able to destroy flock too easily, the light artefact has a limited battery that recharges by running around. This means that even in situations where the carrier knows exactly where the flock are hiding they will become vulnerable at some point, allowing for counter-play from hidden flock. Flock are also significantly more agile than the carrier and are capable of jumping up and over objects to attack from above. Jumping from roof to roof has a satisfying feeling about it, but the camera moves around in a drunken fashion that is strange and disorienting until you have gotten used to it.

The objectives are clearly defined and require the carrier to point its artefact at it for a small amount of time. This means that flock can set up decoys near objectives and fool or ambush a wary carrier forced to either become partially vulnerable while capturing the objective or flee.

Every game requires a dong

Finally, the part which makes or breaks any game so daring to attempt to be a lobby multiplayer: the netplay. The lobby system is well designed, allowing you to smoothly drop into sessions with your friends or to just click a button and find some other players. The voting system is simple and easy and leads to an expedient start to your game session. When in game, the effects of latency can at times be quite pronounced:- characters will stutter around the screen as they move along their path. This is not the worst latency-produced effect that I have ever seen; the characters are not rubber banding around and you do not get killed out of nowhere for what seems like no reason. It is difficult to say if there is much effect on the clutch moments but it would be ignorant to assume that there isn’t a bit of unfair loss on behalf of lag.

All of these positives and negatives are irrelevant with regards to the biggest nail in the coffin of The Flock: there is almost no player base. While it is neat and interesting that the developers think that having a limited number of deaths (200+ million) adds intrigue, it is a moot point when there is nobody playing the game to trigger those deaths. A lot of time can be spent searching for people to play with and unless you already have a group of people (check out the steam group http://steamcommunity.com/groups/flocktogether# ) this adds up to hours of wasted time. Since the game has no single player mode, it makes this the most damning reason for the game’s eventual failure. As it is, you must organise groups to play with on your own ahead of time or else waste your money on a game that you will never play because you can’t.

And finally, I will speak about the limited lives gimmick. The general opinion seems to be that having a game which 'ends' after you have paid real money for it is a terrible idea. I don't think this is really the case; if you play a game with an active enough community for long enough that limited lives actually becomes a concern, then can you really be unhappy with it? If I get 30 hours out of this game, I will be happy if it ends or not. The campaign that the devs have promised after the game's end is an added bonus and is one that I hope turns out to be impressive.

The Flock is a fresh breath of life into the arena of first person multiplayer gaming. Sadly, its lack of a player base means that you are wasting your money unless you buy it with a group of others. I am one from the latter criterion, and I have loved every minute of the game; I simply wish more people played.