Does anyone remember The Last Guardian? In that game you’re put in charge of an AI companion that you have to wrangle into doing stuff so you can solve puzzles and it was done with all the finesse that a decade old system could muster. That was, to be blunt, bloody awful and the game suffered incredibly as a result. You’d think, nay hope, that the intervening years would’ve led to some better systems to do that kind of thing but if my experience with Herdling is anything to go by then there hasn’t been much. Of course I can recognise that the act of herding animals isn’t exactly a precise science at the best of times (as my 20+ years growing up rural can attest to) so I’m sure part of that frustration is intentional. Still with not much else going for it Herdling’s core game loop needed to be tight and unfortunately it wasn’t.
Herdling’s story is less about the narrative and more about the atmosphere. Your character awakes from her ramshackle campsite under a busy freeway as she hears the cries of a nearby beast. She frees one and then quickly finds two more of them close by. For whatever reason she now feels the need to herd her newfound beasts to…somewhere that’s not the city, possibly those weird stone statues that are on top of the nearest mountain (because that makes sense, right?). To get there you’ll have to traverse all sorts of terrain, navigate the challenges of keeping a herd together and face various bits of adversity before you make it to wherever it is you’re going.
Given Herdling is an atmospheric storytelling game the environments you find yourself in have been crafted in such a way to evoke specific feelings. The city is tight and claustrophobic. The initial fields you run through are wide open, flanked on either side by traces of humanity. Other human filled areas are dark, technological and filled with threats. Later stages are open vistas that hide their own challenges, making you feel unsafe even though you can’t see any direct threats. It does well to set the emotional vibe of the game through visual storytelling but that’s where the game stops. The rest of the narrative will purely be based on how you play the game.
As the name implies Herdling is about…herding. You start with a small flock of Calicorns, a kind of bipedal fluffy cow that you’re able to control through the use of your magic stick that you picked up at the start of the game. You’ll tame them, name them, decorate them and try to guide them from one place to another. Initially it’s just a romp through a number of wide open spaces but there’s a handful of sections that will require you to be a bit more precise with your herding skills, requiring you to dodge and weave your way through lest you lose one of your herd. That can and, should you not pay attention, will happen. It’s a simple premise which is brought down by just how wonky the controls feel.
To be sure, I’ve had my crack at herding animals in the past and it’s about as precise an endeavour as Herdling makes it out to be. Still though I felt like I was always fighting with the controls who’s fidelity and accuracy varied wildly depending on where I happened to place myself near or within the herd. The controls also appeared to be far more responsive in certain situations before turning into pudding shortly after. Now, I get it, part of the challenge is about how you help these beasts navigate through things but hot damn was it deeply unfun to have to replay sections because my herd turned too sharply and got stuck on something.
It also felt like the game was possibly meant to be something else, something grander and parts had to be cut in order to make a deadline. I say this because there are numerous parts of the game that look like they should be explorable but they’re not, either blocked by an invisible wall or an ever increasing fog. One such area had me scratching my head for a good 10 minutes because it looked like where I was supposed to go. I mean it was a giant stone ring and the landscape naturally flowed that way but no, it was nothing. I’m not sure if Herdling is the game the devs wanted to make but it sure felt like there were parts left unfinished.
Finally the narrative is light on the ground and honestly doesn’t do enough to keep you engaged with what’s happening. It alludes to some grander, more mystical relationship that you and the beasts have but given there’s no dialogue, no flavour text, no grounding elements on which to build off of everything is just your interpretation of what’s happening. To be sure there can be some interesting tales spun about how your particular playthrough went, and all the challenges you did or didn’t face, but the game’s narrative is barely even background to that. The way the game was constructed seems like it wants to speak to some interesting themes, like how things can be lost when we’re not close to nature, but at the end of the day it has nothing to say about it.
Saying all this I feel like I’m maybe being a bit too harsh on Herdling. It’s not like I was actively hating every moment I had with the game. More it seems like the negative parts of the experience stick out in my mind more than the positive ones do. That’s the risk you take when doing something experimental like this and it’s quite possible that this is just one of those titles that didn’t click for me.
Rating: 6.5/10
Herdling is available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S right now for $36.90. Game was played on the PC with a total of 2.3 hours playtime and 67% of the achievements unlocked.
