Herdling Review (PC) - A Professional Shepherd’s Take on Herdling

When I first saw this nifty indie title made by Okomotive in collaboration with Panic Games that had you leading a dozen-odd herd of large horned creatures up some mountains inspired by the Himalayas, as a professional shepherd who’s been working with goats for over 16 years, I knew that I had to check it out.

Similarly to something like Journey, Abzu, or, to a lesser extent, Ico, this is a straightforward, atmospheric “walking simulator” that’s all about the vibes. You start out as a youth in a tunnel, awoken one night by the sound of a distressed creature. Then you’ll walk through the tunnel, dodge fencing, and amble onto a basketball court in a dark courtyard, where a large Calicorn is violently struggling with a bucket on its head. Your character calmly walks up to it and takes off the bucket. There’s a staff or branch on the ground somehow, and your character instinctually uses it to guide the now-friendly, lumbering beast through the city. As you progress, you’ll learn how to work together with your new friend to open gates and discover two smaller Calicorns. You’ll be leaving town by the time the sun begins to rise, and are greeted by a gorgeous sight - a vast field, with forests ahead and mountains in the distance.

Here, you’ll be introduced to some new elements - blueish flowers that add some color to your Calicorns’ fur, granting them the ability to dash forwards for a time, and spikes that you’ll need to dodge with careful maneuvering. Without getting too far into spoilers, you’ll be progressing through a plateau, forest, and foothills, making your way towards the distant mountains, encountering unusual situations, and acquiring new additions to your herd. There’s light puzzle-solving, such as working together with the Calicorns to push objects, plus activating magical switches that spawn flowers that need to be collected to activate murals. The visually-told story, such as it is, was quite honestly lost on me.

Incredibly Simple Gameplay with Wonderful Creatures

Gameplay-wise, Herdling is really quite simple, but tough to master. You use the right trigger to guide your herd of Calicorns forwards, and approaching them at slight degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise will send them at different angles. You can hit B to slow them down, and press it twice to stop their movement. To pull off a sharp turn, you can sprint to flank them on either side. When your Calicorns are hurt, you can heal them by offering blue berries that grow in certain areas. Offering them two berries, one at a time, will grant them the ability to sprint again. There are also red flowers that you’ll encounter that will make your whole herd (and you) sprint at full speed in energetic sections. While most of the game is fairly easy, when the going gets tough, it takes a lot of patience to keep these creatures in good standing. You can also find nifty decorations to hang off of their horns, and you can pet and clean them (when dirty). Puzzlingly, there’s no command to bring the Calicorns to you. So you’ll constantly be stopping and flanking them.

The creatures, which you can name individually, move convincingly enough, and the animations are inspired. However, I wish that we’d seen more interactions in general between them, and at more key moments. It feels like they do hardly anything other than follow you around. No unscripted eating, no environmental transformations, nothing to clean up after, no random bleats or belches, etc. There are only a couple of instances in which they will munch on grass or drink water. Needless to say, they could have used a little more character. One thing I’d have made sure to do is to have new creatures greet each other when you introduce the herd to a new one. It’d make a lot of sense for them to all “establish the pecking order” by either butting heads or rearing up against each other, only for one to essentially admit defeat and fall in line, as real herd animals do. Other behavioral elements that would have been interesting to see include certain animals sticking to their ‘close friends’ like glue, animals wandering off to eat only to come when called, and one or more that tend to either get left behind or stubbornly resist the shepherd.

One of the major dangers to your creatures is the occasional sharp object (usually metal) that can hurt them by piercing their skin. Your animals can also be hurt by creepy predatory birds if you upset their little statues in certain labyrinth-like sections. While I fully understand this from a gameplay perspective, I think that including this element feels fairly contrived, as real herd animals have excellent peripheral vision and collision detection, and can spot and dodge sharp objects that stick out very easily.

The game defaults to allowing Calicorns to die, whether it’s after several hits without any healing, or from falling to their death. Both instances are avoidable, although you have to be absolutely on top of it each time in order to prevent death. Once a Calicorn dies, their ghost will follow you throughout the rest of the game. In one very neat instance, a ghostly Calicorn will lead you to an injured one. The game auto-saves with no option to manually save or load, which is an artistic choice to be sure, but not a welcome one for me. I played the game with Calicorn Immortality on, as I deal with animal mortality in my real life and would rather not have another layer of stress put upon me by a game with controls that to me were quite tough to master.

Immersive Environments, Mellow Music

Aside from the Calicorns, Herdling’s second most interesting feature is actually its soundtrack. Joel Schoch composes and mixes the game’s emotional soundtrack, which is in turns lilting, haunting, emotional, pastoral, meditative, and ultimately triumphant. The soundtrack is quite frankly better than the game deserves, and I would be happy to give it several spins just on its own.

The game also features many breathtaking environments. The game’s simple, straightforward art style works well for the dank forests, vast mountainous vistas, glaciers, and the like. It is nothing to write home about, but they do their job amply. Even when I was sometimes struggling to figure out what my next step was, the game’s atmosphere and general vibe kept me going. I have seen some people take anywhere between 2-4 hours to beat the game, but I took my time and explored and finished it in about five and a half.

A Journey Worth Taking… For Some

Herdling’s final act is something of a triumph. Strongly reminiscent of Journey, in all the right ways, this conclusion made the game easy for me to recommend to those who enjoy atmospheric vibe-fests. If you’ve made it this far and have seen even just a few snippets of gameplay, you probably already know whether or not this game will be for you.

Personally, I enjoy these types of artsy walking simulator games… to an extent. Herdling boasts an excellent soundtrack and a completely unique shepherding premise, but only delivers upon the more surface-level aspects of its promise. Even so, it’s easy to fall in love with the fuzzy Calicorns and be invested in their journey to find a home. I wanted to love this game, but at the full price of $24.99 on Steam, maybe it’s just slightly disappointing that the best I can muster is a nod of approval.

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Verdict: 3 / 5 (Good)

PROS

• Incredibly emotional and immersive soundtrack

• Gorgeous animations and vistas

• The Calicorn creatures are easy to love

CONS

• Does not adequately convey the personality and reality of herd animals

• Some environmental puzzles can take a lot of patience

• No option to manually save

What I’ve Played 

• Beat the game once in 5.5 hours with Calicorn Immortality on

• Tamed all 12 Calicorns

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About the Author - Joseph Choi

Filipino-American gamer, professional shepherd and farmer, author, and filmmaker/videographer living in Central California. First consoles were the Game Boy and Sega Genesis, and I've been gaming since then, with a focus on Nintendo and Sony consoles.