Flockers Review


Developers Team 17 have been working on their famous Worms franchise for over 10 years now. Now Team 17 is working on a new IP, and it is called Flockers. Flockers takes place in the same universe as the Worms games, only here the sheep are not used as dynamite, but especially replace the lemmings role in the game. It may not be considered a direct sequel, but it might as well be, since Team 17 does not stray much from their well known path.

Even though you never played this game before….you played this game before.

Staying way too faithful to the lemmings formula, the mindless sheep are in constant danger since there are deadly saw blades, big drops, and heavy weights waiting to kill those that are unfortunate to fall into these traps. What is expected from the player is to do is to prevent these poor sheep from meeting a nasty and gory end. The game offers the player interesting and fun way to do this. The sheep can be given a superhero cape that allow these to fly up, or even sacrifice one as a bomb to save the others. Constantly coming up with new ways to save these sheep is mentally taxing and really forces players to think critically about what to do to save these sheep and get a high score.

To the season veteran to Team 17 games, Flockers never really adds much to this game. Features like gravity inverts are used to change things up a bit through the games 60 levels. What it does add is an added bonus for exploring the stage. There are small rewards that are given for unlocking achievements, such as 8-bit sheep. Extra levels can be unlocked as well as collectibles and those are welcomed and interesting improvements and additions to this game.

The art style of the game seems to be a bit off. The aesthetics of the game suggest a cute and simple design, but the gore shown when the sheep die does not mix well with how the rest of the game looks. The sound design of the game is nothing extraordinary, but is still solid. The game runs smoothly at 1080p with a 60 FPS.

Ultimately, Flockers is too similar to the previous Team 17 games, so similar as to wonder why not just make a direct sequel with lemmings instead of sheep. The game offers amusements, replay ability, and a challenge, but never really offers anything new in a meaningful way. This is not a modern take on the A to B puzzle genre that Team 17 promised, it is just more of the same.