The Pokémon series has taught us that collecting creatures is a fun and exciting process.
But it’s not necessary to catch wildlife in Poké Balls and organise battles — sometimes it’s enough to let the player simply observe nature and explore.
This mechanic is especially common in space adventures such as No Man’s Sky and Starfield, where scanning bizarre animals allows you to learn about their characteristics and habits.
Flock is a game about just that: travelling through a mysterious place where creatures worthy of your attention are hiding (or not hiding) around every corner.
The professor’s assistant
After creating a character, we sit on a bird and fly to the cloud-covered region of Uplands, where we meet Aunt Jane, a professor of zoology.
We were invited because we are a bird rider — a representative of a rare profession, without which Aunt Jane cannot complete her fauna reference book.
The professor has a rough idea of what kinds of creatures live in the area, what families they belong to, and where they can be found, and she gives us an empty reference book with dozens of colourful circles to fill in during our research.
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The first creature recorded in the book is a representative of the cosmet family — a flying bean with a striped body and a tube-like proboscis.
Before adding it to the reference book, Aunt Jane suggests that we determine the exact species of cosmet — there are five names to choose from, each with a short description. The emperor cosmet is very large and constantly changes colour.
The pink-nosed cosmet has a body and nose of different colours. And so on. If you choose the correct option, enter it in the book. If you choose the wrong one, the professor corrects you, and you still enter it in the book. It is impossible to lose, there are no penalties — you just move on.
That’s Flock in a nutshell: peaceful and calm, allowing you to choose the pace at which you want to learn everything. At first, you don’t even need to look for creatures — they seem to be waiting for you to explore them. Some crawl on rocks, some move among trees, some spin around flowers.
And you fly on a bird and never get off it, and you don’t need to (and can’t) adjust the altitude yourself — the game itself will determine when to climb to the top of the hill or descend closer to the ground. The player only controls the speed — a separate button allows you to sprint, and flying through air currents allows you to move from one area to another in a matter of seconds.
The regions open up gradually, and they are all different from each other. There are plains with tall grass, areas with stone ruins, and forests with giant mushrooms, both tall and very low and flat, under which some animals hide.
The creatures are also unique — after the striped flying bean, you will encounter jumping worms, space fish, sperm whales with feathers on their chins, spotted seahorses, and other bizarre representatives of the fauna.
At first, everyone is friendly towards you, but later some individuals begin to run away or hide when you appear, preventing you from studying them. And you won’t see some creatures at all until you use the focus mode.
Fly and collect
You don’t just study animals — you can also tame them.
To do this, you need to find the appropriate whistle (unique to each family) and complete a simple mini-game — stay at the required distance from the creature and press the button at the right time to increase the trust level of your future companion.
One whistle is given at the beginning of the game, and the rest must be found throughout the world in large green flower beds, where the villains who attacked the settlement hid all the whistles.