About a month ago we were graced with Steam Next Fest and a whole slew of new and exciting demos to try. As always there were far too many demos to play and far too little time to play them in so I committed to playing one each day until I had a decent enough impression to write down a short review.
Much to my surprise the title I actually enjoyed the most was a charming bite-sized exploration roguelite titled Flocking Hell, the debut title from Sextant Studios. It hit a number of my critical weaknesses when evaluating a game. Short, addictive rounds with meta progression that unlocks synergistic combos while also managing to feel like a unique enough spin on the more traditional roguelite formula. Now that it’s been fully released, I felt duty-bound to revisit it and give the full title a try.
Introduction
I’m not sure about you, but when picturing a sheep, the image that comes to mind is a rather placid animal, leisurely grazing in an open field. At what point they advanced to the level of building medieval fortresses with associated infrastructure, I am not sure, but needs must when a demonic invasion is on your doorstep.
When a game tries a small novel idea like this, I have never felt the need for justification. There is no story or lore here, and I don’t have a problem with it. Sheep good. Demons bad. Help defend sheep from demons, that’s all I need. The pixel graphics do add a slight fantasy charm, and there is some satisfying visual progression as more and more sheep start to populate the roadways alongside rewarding audio queues when fortifying a city, but I want to set your expectations that this title is all about the gameplay loop.
Charting New Lambs
In that case, the gameplay loop had better be fun and engaging. I found it to be, although it took a little while to really start to appreciate the nuance and varied strategies on offer. An average game of Flocking Hell is going to be divided into two main ‘stages’. An exploration phase where you are slowly revealing the map to try and locate other cities and build up resources, and then a development phase where you try to fortify your cities and bolster yourself to deal with the oncoming invasion. The real strategy of the game is in how you explore efficiently to avoid wasting resources, as well as knowing when to pivot into bolstering your existing network, which gives it a rather unique feel compared to other roguelites on the market.
Let’s take a step back, though. Why are we exploring, and how does it work? Flocking Hell takes place over a seven-round campaign on one of two difficulties. Each level will place you in a 10×10 grid filled with 4 main points of interest. Cities to defend, Mines which charge a pre-emptive strike on the demons, a Cottage/Farms serving as big resource nodes, and the Hell Pit from which the invasion will begin. Connecting cities with roads is your main goal and will allow them to grow over time, with the growth increasing for each city connected.
A well-connected network of cities with some additional turns to grow is important in gathering enough defenders to fight back against the threat. Connect everything too late, and it may not have time to build up sufficient population. With each level only taking around 5 minutes, it’s a quick enough loop that you can easily jump back into it if your cities end up in ruins.
To build up your defences, you are going to need resources to build roads and use cards to fortify cities. The former is found through exploring. Crucially, tiles around a city are poor for generating resources, so your aim is going to be finding cities in minimal time so you can explore more resource-rich areas, such as the elusive farms.
Fortunately, you aren’t just clicking blindly on this big grid; Flocking Hell has a minesweeper-esque system where a tile will usually tell you how many cities are surrounding it. It’s not going to let you perfectly pick out cities, but it can give you an idea of being in the right area. This all makes for an engaging system that constantly prompts the player to make interesting decisions. When do I stop exploring? Do I risk searching for the farm instead of cities? Are my resources better spent on the road of mining?
Assembling Your Herd
There is also a light deckbuilding aspect to the title. If you don’t want to waste time aimlessly exploring, then maybe you can add some cards to your deck that allow you to locate cities more easily or reveal more tiles. As with everything in Flocking Hell, you need to carefully weigh up the trade-offs because those card slots could also be filled with cards that promote growth or gather extra crystal from the mines.
Cards cost resources and are drawn in pairs (playing one discards the other), which further pushes the player to balance their moves carefully. Although in many situations the choice in which card to play was not the hard one, different cards lend themselves to different phases of the game, and a mismatched pair trivialises that choice, but I did find myself frequently weighing up if the resources could be better used elsewhere.
Overall the deckbuilding aspect works fine but has some weaknesses, there are a surprising number of strategies you can apply given the simple game concept. Some cards that I had initially written off as being underpowered became far more viable as more options were unlocked through the meta progression and additional synergies became available. This serves as one side of a double-edged sword. You only get some starter cards and one (sometimes two if you performed exceptionally well) card after each level.
With a choice of only 3 cards on victory and no option to reroll rewards at any point, it feels big risk to pick cards that need synergies to perform well, especially as you gradually add to the card pool. Before these unlocks, the cards are more consistent, but there is a risk of players dropping off due to the strategies feeling rather samey.
These combine with “guides”, 3 unlocks you will get as each campaign progresses, that provide passive effects that often interact with your cards for bigger bonuses. Yet, unlike with a lot of roguelites, you will rarely get the feeling of “popping off” and becoming unstoppable. Even with some great RNG and a solid strategy, the demons are still likely going to knock down a good portion of your cities, and runs can be won or lost on a knife-edge, especially on competitive.
When your turn counter is up the demonic horde approaches. Flocking Hell advertises itself with auto battler combat, this is technically true as the demons attempt to raze your cities without interaction. With each city, your valiant woolly defenders will reduce the horde’s size, but with each victory, the demons gain confidence and chop through your future cities at an increased rate.
This does lead to a tense conclusion as the remaining demons get scarier and your defences start to thin. Obscuring if you have done enough to win the day doesn’t stop this from ultimately being an animated stat check. You are almost always better frontloading your defences onto the first cities to be attacked, where possible and there is very limited control over positioning (some events and especially rare cards can impact it). It certainly succeeds as an exploration roguelite, but just be aware the auto-battling is rudimentary in comparison.
Final Thoughts
Initially going into the full release I found myself a little disappointed there didn’t seem to be much of a change from the demo but warmed up to it a lot more as additional cards were unlocked I got into the nuances of the strategy. There are a number of level modifiers and multiple bosses, which go some way to keeping the formula fresh, but the gameplay loop still feels a little samey.
Despite this, the bite sized nature of the levels and branching strategies has made it a great game for me to boot up and spend 30 minutes on a quick campaign. The difficulty hits the sweet spot where I always feel I can do slightly better on one more run.
In a market as saturated as this it’s always a pleasure when a game comes along that feels like a fresh experience. It brings to mind the early stages of a 4X title where you scope out your surroundings with anticipation of what you will find. I have certainly got my money’s worth out of Flocking Hell and can offer a recommendation to anyone interested in the premise. Some minor drawbacks didn’t stop me from enjoying my time with Flocking Hell, and I look forward to seeing what Sextant Studios develop in the future because this was certainly an interesting first foray! If you are uncertain about an exploration roguelite being for you, then go and give the Flocking demo a try at least, it just might surprise you.
