What do you get if you take the mechanics from Lemmings and the sheep from Worms, and and cross them with a factory which is trying to kill everything? You get Flockers - that’s what you get; you sheep trying to escape a maze of deadly traps, and it’s incredible .
Given that Lemmings is one of our favorite games of all time, and since we have all spent a fair amount of time killing each other in Worms, it is with a certain amount of relish that we sat down to play Flockers back at Rezzed 2014. In the months since, this new IP from the mascohists at Team17 has evolved from the 3 demo levels we fell in love with, to a whopping 25 death-defying levels in the Early Access edition on Steam a few days ago.
Here at Continue Play we like games that are different; while this game is basically Lemmings but with sheep, it is still a wholly unique experience, and thoroughly rewarding - it may seem like just another puzzle game, but when you complete a level with more than one sheep still bleating, you know you’ve done a good job.
If you thought Lemmings was tough, you are in for a hard time with Flockers. This game gets fucking difficult.
The display is incredibly remniscent of Lemmings
Flockers uses a similar set of mechanics to Lemmings, and borrows from the art direction of Worms, giving a slight nostalgic tug for both games at the same time. Take a single glance at the game and it just screams Team 17 - something the developers admit they are particularly proud of.
For those of you who are unforgivably unfamiliar with Lemmings, it’s set on a 2D plain and task the player with moving your creatures from A to B. In Lemmings, we had Blockers, Builders, Diggers, Miners, Bombers, and a whole host of other abilities to give to your suicidal critters in order to help them work towards their freedom. If you didn’t set the right lemming the right job at the right place and the right time, they will all walk off a cliff to certain death.
Flockers, instead of using the iconic lemming, uses sheep - another animal famously renowned for following each other off of cliffs. While there are less tasks to set your sheep than there are in Lemmings, Flockers is surprisingly difficult.
While the mechanics are similar, they’re not identical; you have the option to set a sheep down as what you think would resemble a Blocker, but you quickly learn that this is more of an inconvenience as the other sheep just step right over them. You can stack two of these non-Blockers to create an impassable wall, or even offset three of them to form a mini staircase using predefined options from your toolbar. However, unlike in Lemmings - where you could start a level with say 50 Climbers, 5 Blockers and 10 Builders, and use that information as a hint to the level solution - Flockers gives you jobs as pick-ups from strategically-placed crates, similar to weapon drops in Worms. Time a job wrong - or simply don’t pay enough attention - and you’re screwed. Your sheep are also screwed, and you have no choice but to restart the level. Again.
We’ve finished Lemmings on the hardest difficulty multiple times over the years but Flockers makes that game look like a cakewalk.
It’s not even the pickups and the limited number of jobs which make this game particularly difficult; the factory which your sheep are desperately trying to escape from is not a static environment. It’s dynamic, and it’s actively trying to kill your sheep with a variety of death-dealing traps, all while making a fool out of you. There are switches and buttons to hit, and mines and traps to avoid. Often, you’ll find that you need to hit a button to lower a bridge for you sheep to pass - but doing so will cause you to sacrifice a large number of sheep to a falling anvil, or a suddenly-activated buzz saw which suddenly turns your factory into an abattoir.
If it sounds frustrating, it can be, but the game remains compelling and highly entertaining. Flockers is a lot of fun, and the challenges it sets are incredibly engaging. There are golden sheep hidden around the game, dangling in cages which you must crash a sheep into to collect. Some of these are simple enough, others just leave you damn confused - either way, you’ll fist-pump when you pick one up. At this point we have no idea what they do - but that doesn’t stop us fist-pumping every time we get one.
The levels aren’t easy, but nor are they impossible. Unlocked in batches of 5, while you will find yourself stuck on one level from time to time, you can easily skip a level and come back to it later. As long as you can do the other levels in that batch, you can unlock the next 5 to throw your sheep against.
Early Access games always have their fair share of problems; they’re still in the middle of development, so it’s only natural that they contain a few bugs. Flockers is no exception. The game comes with 25 levels at the moment - which you can finish in an afternoon if you want to - but you’re more likely to do two or three levels at a time before the camera becomes an issue and starts to grate.
The camera in Flockers works in much the same way as it does in both Lemmings and Worms. If you want to look to the left or right of your current screen, you can simply nudge the screen over with the mouse. Alternatively, and more conveniently, you can use the WASD keys; the issue here is that using WASD sometimes doesn’t respond, or even moves the camera in a direction other than what you wanted. It’s disorientating as hell, and frustrating to boot - you try your best to time when to give your sheep a job, saving as many sheepy-lives as you can when, boop! The screen is going off in the wrong fucking direction again, and your sheep are making sweet, sweet love to a buzz saw.
You restart the level. Again.
Veterans of Lemmings will be pausing their game at this point, and trying to asign jobs from the paused screen where they have both time to think and time to act. We tried this too, but Flockers doesn’t let you asign jobs while the game is paused; we really hope that this is a feature coming at a later date, because as it stands, spamming the space bar to pause and unpause the game every few seconds as you assign jobs is just annoying
A nice feature that has been brought forth from Lemmings is the fast-forward button; it’s damn useful when you’re waiting for your level to finish as sheep slowly bleat their way to the exit, saving you precious seconds which could be spent on the next level. The problem is that this button has a tendency to stick; even after moving on, or resetting the level, you will occasionally find that your sheep are hurtling forward at twice their normal speed, and with all the will in the world, you simply can’t click on your sheep that fast.
None of these bugs are game breaking, but they are annoying. The camera issue at the very least is something that requires immediate attention - but we have played Steam Early Access games which are a lot, lot worse than this, and we are thoroughly enjoying Flockers at this point. Plus, Team 17 has plenty of time to sort the issue out and we’re hopeful that all of these early problems are sorted prior to the game’s final launch.
We are not only excited to see where this game will be going over the next few months, but we’re also enjoying climbing the leaderboards at the end of each level. Seriously - how you people at number 1 beat us, we do not know. You have our undying respect.
Flockers is shaping up to be a wonderful game. It has the same off-kilter sense of humor that the developer is known for, while its challenging gameplay is incredibly satisfying. We’ll continue to keep an eye on it as it develops, but what we’ve said tempts you to give it a shot, you can get a copy of the game now at its discounted Early Access price.
Nic Bunce
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