Flock Review (Xbox Series X)

Hmmm, yes you’re cute enough. Welcome to my flock!

To be honest, when I first saw the trailer for Flock I had no idea what to make of it. It looked cute and that was it. It wasn’t until the next trailer, which showed off and talked more about the gameplay, that got me a bit interested in the game. After all, I have played similar games and enjoyed them, so Flock would be up my alley. It wasn’t until Flock released when it found itself back on my radar. When I had some free time, but couldn’t decide on which game to play, I put some on a wheel, spun it, and it landed on Flock. So, here I am!

After making your character and choosing what color style your bird will have, the game opens to you soaring through the sky talking to your bird to pass the time. We learn that our Aunt Jane needed help and called us over to the Uplands where she’s currently doing research at. Aunt Jane is a zoology professor and she’s here with some of her research students, her twin brother Uncle Reg who loves sheep, and a wandering wardrober named Nadiya. You weren’t actually told why Aunt Jane needed help, but as you get closer to their location, the around of clouds clues you in. Once you reach your Aunt and Uncle, they fill you in on why they called you over to help. You soon learn that there were two reasons, The first is that they’re putting together an official Uplands Creature Guide and it can’t happen without a bird rider like you. A lot of the creatures are too fast to catch on foot, but a bird can easily keep up. Plus, Uncle Reg’s favorite sheep decided to roam somewhere by itself. The second is that there was an unexpected Cloudsurge, the first one in decades actually, and their research students got trapped in it. I don’t believe Cloudsurges are explained, but it does seem like it’s a phenomenon where clouds uncharacteristically rise in one concentrated spot. Most caught up in it are trapped, probably due to low visibility, while not even creatures or birds outside of it will dive in and instead will avoid the area or fly above it.

Thankfully, there does seem to be a way to have the clouds fall and you all get to witness it yourselves. However, there is some bad news. Right as you’re getting the hang of things, a whole gang of thieving creatures known as Burgling Bewls raid Aunt Jane and Uncle Reg’s camp. They were able to steal a lot, including a feeding bag and all the whistles that are used to charm the different creature families. And, well, you kind of need those whistles if you want the creature guidebook to be detailed.

So, not only will you be helping Aunt Jane with her Uplands Creature Guide, but you need to get back what those Burgling Bewls stole and a way to trigger cloud falls so the whole island will be accessible and so the researchers can be trapped no more. Don’t worry, this is so easy you won’t have to get off your pretty bird to do them.

Flock’s story is pretty lightweight, but it does its job. This game really only needed a reason why you’re here and doing what you’re doing, which this does do well at. How it’s written is also nice, does well in catching you up to speed in this world, and has a touch of humor to it. I do wish there were more interactions and there was a bit more definitive ending, but otherwise it’s good. For this type of game, I’d rather have the focus be on the gameplay rather than the story anyway.

I do want to give two tips for going through Flock’s story. Firstly, if you don’t know how to progress to the next story beat since you don’t have a task reminder from anyone, it is mainly solved by flying around exploring and charming creatures. Eventually, you will stumble upon what you need. Personally, it didn’t take me too long to find what I needed for Aunt Jane to call about the task. Second, the second to last area you unlock, the mossy forest area, does have one of the more vague requirements. You can easily find the place you need to go to, but you do need to bring a specific creature.

Before going into the gameplay, I do want to mention that Flock does have a co-op and solo mode. So, if you want to play this with a friend, you can. I played Flock solo, so my review will only be on the solo experience. The only thing I know co-op wise is that you do get a set of emotes and a ping button.

Let’s get into the gameplay and in Flock it’s pretty simple once you’re taught how to do everything. The whole game has you riding your bird around Uplands, with the occasional perching when you just want a break, to enjoy the scenery, or to talk to someone. All you have to worry about is steering as your bird automatically handles the flight height and avoids obstacles. This is pretty weird at first, but admittedly it’s nice not having to worry about it. Your bird also handles the speed, which it does feel too slow at times, but there is a dash you can activate so your bird will have a burst of speed. Helping you quickly get through areas and there are even structures which give you more of a boost when you dash when you’re in front of it, but before your bird would swerve to avoid it. Though, the dashing could be a bit of a detriment.

I love this little guy and his no thoughts lol

As you’re exploring the Uplands, you’ll see and hear the various creatures that inhabit it. They fly, hop around, hide, and even swim. They also have their own call, which they occasionally do or when you happen to spook them. Also, there are 12 different creature families with each one being unique from one another. There are some similar features between some of them, but even those have a difference that you can spot. In addition, each creature in the family are different from one another, inhabit different biomes, and have their own unique call. You start out with the easy creatures and eventually you’ll be tackling the ones that require a bit more work (and maybe going insane wondering what that noise is in the forest only to find out it was a sneaky creature hiding too well). When you encounter a creature, you’ll be prompted to identify it if it’s the first time you’re encountering them. Aunt Jane basically quizzes you here as she is the resident expert. If it’s the first one in its family you’re encountering, Aunt Jane will tell you which one it belongs to, but after that you’ll be asked to identify which family it belongs to. Next up is identifying which specific species it is and you do this by watching how it acts and looking at its patterns. You’ll get a list of all the species in that family and a short description that is its most distinctive difference from the other species in the family. The name of the creature itself may even help as well. You just need to pick the right one and viola, you identified the creature! Don’t worry though, Aunt Jane won’t leave to struggling and will tell you herself what the creature is; giving you one chance to identify the family and two chances to identify the species.

Once you retrieve the whistle that belongs to a specific creature family, you’ll then be able to charm them. You can find the whistles in certain dome shaped meadows that the Burgling Bewls are hiding in. Once you run across a species in that family again, you’ll be given the option to charm them and doing it will put you in a minigame. Here, a charm meter and two sets of parentheses (representing sound waves) around the creature. The first, still set is the creature’s sweet spot and the second, moving set is yours. All you have to do is position yourself to where your set overlaps with the creature’s and sing. If your set is outside of the creature’s, that means you’re too far away; while if it’s inside, you’re too close. You’re graded on your accuracy and you’ll fill up their charm meter. While the full meter will pop up no matter what, each creature has its own level to where you need to fill it up to if you want them to be successfully charmed.

Be careful though, if you get too far away, the charming will fail. You’ll also spook it if you don’t hit the creature’s sweet spot.

Hi

Once a creature is charmed, they’ll join your flock! This means that they’ll fly around with you in the overworld, which is so cool. You start out with a small flock size, but you can increase it as you’re playing through the game. If you charm a creature with a full flock, the oldest creature will be dismissed (or a duplicate if you have it set as that). Don’t worry though, you can call back any creature you called at any time and you can set creatures as a favorite so they won’t leave your flock. In addition, your flock will also help you while charming. The flock adds onto your score (you’ll even see some hearts fly to the creature you’re charming!) and while I’m not sure how much your grading determines how much of the charm meter is filled up, I do feel like your flock adds a bit more to it.

Some creatures do require some more work to be able to identify and charm them. A lot of the creatures are chill, sure, but there are some more skittish creatures, creatures that will run away and you need to chase them down until they tire out, ones that only show up during certain times of the day, some that camouflage themselves, some will give you a time limit before they run away (though I never had a problem with this), and a few where you need to do a specific action before they reveal themselves. There are a few that even has a combination of two of these aspects. Depending on the creature, the charm meter will vary as well. This isn’t even taking into account that all the creatures have their own chance percentage of them spawning. I’m pretty sure the rarer the creature is, the more you need to fill out the charm meter. Luckily, you do get hints on the creatures that you’re missing and see which ones you’re able to reach. Aunt Jane gives you a hint through the Creature Guide tab and the research students gives you a slightly different hint as well. There are also four different times of the day this game has, which you can easily check with a press of the button, and the spawns get rerolled each time it rolls to the next quarter.

Once you get the hang of it, charming creatures is pretty easy and fun. Though, that doesn’t mean you won’t still mess up from time to time. The only annoyance you’ll probably have is if a creature you need to chase down blends in with its environment, making it easy to lose it, or when you spook a creature that’s rare or require a bit more work in finding or charming them. There is a setting where you can make the charming minigame easier, but I didn’t turn that on until I had three creatures left to identify and charm since I did like the added difficulty.

Aside from that, there is a Focus Mode you can enter so you can focus a cursor on key points/items or creatures. You do need to keep it on them for a couple seconds though. When you’re flying around, it’s always set on the default zoom, but while you’re perching you can zoom in and out as much as you want (in the restrictions, of course). There’s also a handy map where you’ll get to see how much of Uplands you have unlocked, see where you first encountered a creature (which I’m pretty sure where you first identified one), and set markers. Important things like landmarks, task locations (if the task marks the map, meadows you found, where your sheep are, and research students are marked on the map as well. For your sheep and map markers specifically, you can use your bird’s call so those will pop up in the overworld for a short time. Very convenient when you don’t want to open the map a lot.

There are some optional stuff for you to do, which most of these are just completing what you were doing. You can wait to do these until you finish the story if you want and I’m pretty sure there’s only one creature that’s locked by you completing the story. You can identify and charm all the various creatures that inhabit the Uplands, which is a total of 55. Using the feeding bag on the various feeders scattered around can help you in this aspect as it’ll even attract the creatures that are experts at camouflage. There is one creature that is exclusive to a feeder and there may be a couple creatures that won’t be lured out by a feeder. I know one creature won’t, the one that was the last one I needed to get, but there are two other creatures that have some more involvement in revealing them that may have them be excluded from the feeder spawn pool. You can find all the Burgling Bewls and retrieve everything that they stole. In addition to all the whistles, which you’ll need to charm all the creatures, there are baubles which increase your flock size and magazines that contain knitting patterns. These knitting patterns unlock clothing options for customization and you can buy these with wool. You get wool balls by having your sheep graze on the meadow domes. It takes more grazes as you get more sheep, but after a set amount you’ll be able to shear them and get their wool. Talking about sheep, you can also find five sheep. I was able to find all five while I was going through the story, but I’d say they’re easy to miss and there were two that I just happened to stumble on.

The research students that you need to find for Aunt Jane also has some optional content. Aside from retelling you the tips, they also have challenges. The first one is a one time challenge where you’re asked to charm a specific creature and show it to them (which means having it out in your flock) to get some wool. There are also charming challenges which you can do as many times as you want where you get a time frame to charm so many of one family type. You get some wool if you succeed and nothing happens if you don’t. Lastly, there’s becoming an expert for each creature family. Each family has an expertise bar above them and it’s a measure of how much you bonded with that family of creatures. The bar is segmented, requiring you to identify all the species in a family to have the full bar, but you gain some expertise whenever you charm a creature. You’re told that something happens when it’s maxed when you’re introduced to it as well. This is the only grind-y aspect of Flock. I was curious, so I did become a Bewl expert (mainly since Basking Bewls are so easy to find and charm) and it just has every species in that family sparkle when they’re in your flock. Personally, I don’t find that worth it (I caught so many Basking Bewls), but it’s your choice.

There were a few negatives that I had, though these were more fleeting annoyances. I did get used to have the flight height be determined automatically, but it is annoying when you want to be lower yet your bird isn’t descending as you’re hovering. This can be a bit annoying, especially when you’re going for an easily spooked creature. It did also feel some creatures were a bit too easy to be spooked and it was annoying when you spook a rare creature. It is also a bit annoying that when a new creature comes by to the feeder, you need to have them spawn twice since by the time you go through the identification process, it would be past time for it to despawn. The reward for reaching expertise in a creature family doesn’t feel worth it. The hitboxes for stuff or creatures can be a bit iffy in Focus Mode and I almost couldn’t pick up the feeding bag. I just happened to find the spot that let me focus on it long enough to pick it up. I was pretty surprised when there were only two gloves for customization. I did also have the music for the cutscene when the cloud falls cut in and out (both when playing through cloud gaming and after I downloaded it) and there was one time where I was stuck pulling out a Burgling Bewl until the game thankfully registered it should have been pulled out.

So, yeah, most of my negatives were just aspects that annoyed me whenever it popped up. None of these got me to contemplate dropping the game or anything, but I thought it would still be best to mention them.

Flock actually uses music as little as possible and puts a focus on the ambient sounds. The only time there is music playing is when there’s a cutscene happening. I was pretty surprised at this, but it works. Not only does this let you hear all the creature calls as you’re flying around, but gives it a relaxing, cozy atmosphere. There’s even a cute aspect that I loved in the form of the bird learning the various whistle calls itself. I also liked the artstyle, which is pretty cute, and I found the way this game was animated pretty charming as well. There are so many cute or cool creatures here and the sheep are so cute as well. I love how all the sheep have a distinct feature to set them all apart and that you can pick their names.

Verdict

I honestly didn’t expect to like Flock as much as I did. Like I said in the beginning, I had no idea what to expect from this game other than it was cute. I picked this up expecting to fill up the hour I had free and little did I know I would not only finish it, but enjoy it enough to do some optional stuff and have a play session be 6 hours. I really enjoyed playing Flock and while there were some annoyances along the way, I had a lot of fun looking for, identifying, and charming all the creatures. It’s a pretty relaxing, chill game that you can just unwind to (well, when you’re not going crazy looking for a creature that’s rare and/or hard to spot) and even fall asleep to if you’re tired enough. Not to mention that the game is so cute and charming.

I’d say Flock is definitely worth checking out if you’ve enjoyed similar games. Especially so if you’re like me and get the urge to find and charm all of the creatures.