The folks at Team 17 must have been big Lemmings fans in the 90s. Their latest release, Flockers, seems to be an homage to that port-friendly 90s puzzler. The flock that must guided from point A to point B are of the sheep variety. The sheep drop into the level and will walk in whatever direction they are facing. If that means right off a cliff or results in being impaled on spikes – so be it. Flockers is much more gruesome than its inspiration. Copious amounts of blood can be seen from the many methods in which members of the flock will/can meet their demise.
Getting the sheep to safety is no simple task. You will have to give(or take) the sheep abilities to be successful. Capes for flying, knitted hats for jumping and explosive attributes can be applied to singular or groups of sheep. Green blocks can also be placed in the environment to force the sheep to form short walls or stairstep formations.
The environments in Flockers are huge; one analog controls a cursor and another the camera. Zooming in and out can be done with the triggers in addition to the dpad being used to pause or fast-forward the gameplay. This is where the difficulty comes in. Controlling Flockers well is really tough. Getting the camera where you need it to be and in place on time is more frustrating than it should be. I can only assume that playing on the PC with a keyboard and mouse is a better experience. But I don’t know for sure having never played it on the PC. The ability to quickly zoom in to an area that the cursor is on with the up button on the dpad does help somewhat. But too many times I’d be cursing the controls for not allowing me to do what I needed to. Nevertheless I had fun with Flockers in-between throwing fits over its intentional and unintentional difficulty.
Recommendation: Worth a buy on sale – if you are ready to tackle the unwieldy controls
Full Disclosure: The Xbox One version of this game was provided to GameEnthus by the publisher.
Genre: puzzler
Developer: Team 17
Publisher: Team 17
Platform(s): Xbox One, PS4, Steam
Price: $24.99
Links
https://store.xbox.com/en-US/Xbox-One/Games/Flockers/2671f9a0-b130-4870-ba23-b74726c1373e?cid=majornelson
http://GameEnthus.com
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gameenthus-podcast-video-games/id286435007?mt=2
Scale:
Worth a buy – paying full price for fans of the series or genre makes sense – often includes a caveat
Worth a buy on sale – not quite full price worthy but close, – often includes a caveat
No – borrow it if you must play it
Please no – Don’t waste any time and/or money on it