Gather your flock and escape to the country

The noise of traffic is a welcome intrusion at the start of Okomotive’s latest adventure. In its Far games, Lone Sails and Changing Tides, we were sole survivors, so it’s reassuring to hear some proof of life beyond our own. And you wouldn’t necessarily know the city was inhabited otherwise – Herdling’s young protagonist begins the game in isolation, sleeping rough beneath an overpass in a part of town so desolate you could believe it had witnessed an apocalypse of its own.

Another sound draws us from our makeshift bed – a crash, then a car alarm close by. Shrouded in an oversized parka, we go to investigate and come across a creature, rather like a long-haired bison, steering into abandoned cars with a waste bin wedged onto its nose. The poor beast can’t free itself. We pick up a nearby stick and prise the bin loose, and now we aren’t alone any more. We’re able to tame the enormous animal, known as a calicorn, by holding down a button. We give it a name, and our stick magically sprouts a flower, a sign that we can use it to guide our furry friend.

Building up a following of calicorns is as simple as that in Herdling. Soon we find two more lost in the city, miniature compared to the first, and once they realise we mean them no harm, they fall in line. For the rest of the game, we’ll drive this train of fluffy cattle, a sort of living equivalent of the vehicles we guided through the landscape in Far.