Video games are good at making us feel things for clumps of pixels, especially when those clumps are in constant mortal peril. Herdling joins a long tradition of extended escort quests that deftly fiddle the heartstrings: everything from Ico and The Last Guardian to the burgeoning library of Sad Dad simulators that define modern gaming.
Herdling reviewDeveloper: OkomotivePublisher: PanicAvailability: Out now on PC (Steam, Epic), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X and Game Pass, and Nintendo Switch
Herdling has much more in common with its stablemates, the critically acclaimed FAR: Lone Sails and FAR: Changing Tides, than it does with anything else: a bleakly apocalyptic duology that was about caring for machines rather than a herd of weird goat things, but with strikingly similar results. The FAR duology made you care about your motor, grow adept at making it go, and feel a torrent of emotions whenever the thing got lost or damaged, as you were constantly thrown into situations which trapped, damaged, or broke your line of sight from your pride and joy.
Herdling pulls all the same tricks, applying them to a collection of Calicorns, a dozen or so ram-like beasts with beautiful horns and adaptive technicolour coats, vaguely defined magical powers and an admirable gift for following basic instructions (go here, go here slowly, OK STOP, etc). Your goal: shepherd them on an alpine journey from the edge of a dystopic city up to the very tip of the mountains, encountering many challenges along the way, ranging from light puzzles to winged terrors that react to sound. Yes, this is a linear game with stealth sections, or “forced stealth” in the parlance of people who dislike stealth.
Those people will be pleased to hear that none of the challenges in Herdling are particularly, well, challenging. The aforementioned stealth sections are almost comically forgiving. You need to sneak your flock past a sleeping murder owl, who will startle awake if one of your lumbering charges knocks over any of the dozens of stone cairns dotted about the place. And it’s tense, in no small part due to the creepy creature designs involved: horrid masked birds of prey with the wingspan of a minibus, claws like angry spiders, and a vacant death stare that pierces the soul.