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Don’t worry, cute co-op adventure Flock is “totally playable as a single-player game"“The trailer has done almost too good a job of selling this as a multiplayer game,” devs tell us
“The trailer has done almost too good a job of selling this as a multiplayer game,” devs tell us
Image credit:Annapurna Interactive
Image credit:Annapurna Interactive
Duringtonight’s Annapurna Interactive Showcase, we got another lovely look atFlock, the latest game fromWilmot’s WarehouseandI Am Deaddevs Hollow Ponds and Richard Hogg. In it, we get to see exactly how its adorable creature herding works inco-op, which you’d probably hope to see, given its own Steam page also describes it as a co-op multiplayer game. But rest assured, Flock is still very much a game you can play on your own, without the need to have a pal along for the ride, the devs tell me.
“The thing that hadn’t occurred to me until just now, thinking about people like you seeing this trailer is, what if people don’t realise you can play in single player?” Hogg tells me ahead of tonight’s showcase. “This trailer has done almost too good a job of selling this as a multiplayer game. But yeah, it’s totally playable as a single player game.”
FLOCK | Gameplay WalkthroughWatch on YouTube
FLOCK | Gameplay Walkthrough
Hollow Ponds' Ricky Haggett adds that they did, in fact, have plans to include some single-player footage in tonight’s latest trailer (embedded above), but when they came around to filming it, “there was just so much gold it just ended up being effectively a multiplayer game with two players,” he says.
“That’s the kind of game we like playing and how we like playing multiplayer games a lot of the time and it was that kind of experience [we wanted to capture],” he continues. “Just hanging out with your friends while you’re doing a thing.”
Indeed, Haggett and Hogg tell me you could theoretically be on the other side of the world doing something completely different to your mate when playing in co-op, and it won’t rely on you playing ‘together’, as such, in order to progress. I’ll have more to say about exactly what you’ll be doing in Flock tomorrow, but there will be tools in the game for comparing your respective guidebooks on the creatures you’ve discovered, and creating markers to suggest good places to maybe have a noodle about it.
As for how Flock will work when playing with strangers online, that’s something Haggett and Hogg are still figuring out. “When it comes to multiplayer and playing with people you don’t know, and where you’re not just hanging out with your mates while you’re playing, I think there’s still some work for us to do there to figure out exactly what the shape of that is,” says Hogg.
Haggett agrees, adding: “A big part of multiplayer is being able to talk to each other and chat to each other. And if you take that away, and you’re playing with a stranger who you potentially aren’t talking to, then it would feel derailing for somebody else to come and just start making things happen. So we’re still figuring out the right level of what co-op means, you know?”
