The concept of Flock reminds me of Lemmings, except fluffy sheep can’t detonate a path to a spaceship. Your job is to scare them in the right direction with a UFO. The levels are designed with obstacles like fences which the sheep need to squeeze through. Water helps in this situation since puddles shrink the sheep. A snarky laundry joke? If you run most of your sheep off a cliff you can procreate with a female sheep and a Viva Pinata like dance to replenish your supply. Fill the mothership with the quota of sheep and you win.
There are fifty levels in Flock with plenty of dirt-absorbing-pig-fun, but what really impressed me was Flock’s level editor. Players can create their own puzzles with the editor and utilize the physics engine created by Proper Gamer. Geoff Gunning, Design and Production Lead, showed me an example of a Rube Goldberg style level where pushing one boulder starts a chain reaction of rolling cows and flying sheep. He admitted this level would take time to create since you have to properly predict where the sheep will fall and so forth. However, it looks like Flock’s level editor has room for a fair amount of creativity since Gunning also had a partially complete pachinko level where sheep replaced the metal balls.
While Flock is in development for the PlayStation 3, PC, and Xbox 360 as a downloadable game I thought it would be a better fit for WiiWare. Pointing the remote to position the UFO seems like a natural fit so I asked Gunning his thoughts on WiiWare and he isn’t opposed to a Wii or DS port. However, Flock has to sell well enough on the existing platforms before he or anyone at Proper Gamer considers to any other editions of Flock.
Images courtesy of Capcom.
