Game Review: Herdling
I’m not sure how, why, or when one of the members of my herd in Herdling died. At some point in the second half of the game I checked my herd list from the pause screen and noticed that one creature – the second one I had found in the game – was now marked as “deceased”.
There are a few ways my poor creature could have died – a vicious bird attack, falling from a cliff, getting injured without me noticing and healing it. I never lost another member of my herd, and the question of how this happened haunted me, as such a question probably should. But the game gave me one respite from my feelings of guilt – every now and then my little lost friend would reappear as a ghost, running with the rest of the herd or napping at a rest spot. I could no longer pat or feed them, and they might disappear when I got close, but there was some comfort in knowing that they still existed in some form.
In Herdling, you play as a child of indeterminate age, gender and background, tasked with gathering and guiding numerous giant, mythical creatures – called calicorns – back home. The creatures have become stranded in hostile environments, starting with an urban sprawl and progressing through forests, snowy mountain ranges and glacial fields, which you need to march them across to return them to safety. You can name each calicorn and adorn them with trinkets and saddles you encounter on your journey, and the gameplay systems are very straightforward: you stand behind your herd and guide them by holding down the right trigger and facing in the direction you want them to go.
You can turn death off from the pause menu, which will render your herd functionally invincible. I do think Herdling would lose something without this element of risk, though – after losing one member of my herd, I approached the rest of my journey with a newfound sense of caution. Herdling is only about three hours long, but the further in you get, the more dangers you face. Because the guiding mechanics don’t always feel particularly precise, making sure that your calicorns don’t tip over any noise-making objects that will alert predators in an area, or that they don’t stumble down crevasses that crack into the ice you’re walking through in another, can feel fraught and tense. I managed to reach the end of the game with only one life lost, which gave even more meaning to the one life I lost.
This is a game about leading creatures to safety, returning them to where they can best live their lives; it’s about practicing selflessness, in a way, as your player character’s only real concern throughout the whole experience is for their herd. The reward, at the end, is a sense of having done something good for them; this journey is not really for the benefit of the character you’re controlling in any meaningful way. This gives Herdling a unique tone: games aren’t always power fantasies, but there’s usually something more tangibly at stake for the player character than there is here.
Herdling is a gorgeous game, with a strong visual focus on the horizon – as a game about venturing forward, it makes sure that the point you’re heading towards is always clear and appealing. When you’re guiding your herd through an open field – especially one full of flowers, which give your creatures the ability to break into a faster stampede, pushing through minor obstacles as they go – it feels exhilarating. The excellent soundtrack, all rhythmic drumming and percussion, gives the game an almost mythic feeling at times as you push forward.
Ultimately, Herdling isn’t a particularly huge or deep game. It’s relatively simple, with no real puzzles and only minor choices for the player to make – you might encounter a fork in the path and choose one way over the other, but the destination is always the same. Yet it’s quite lovely all the same, and as a game where the primary drive is to do good for a herd of animals, there’s something quite spiritual about the experience. It’s hard not to grow attached to your herd – even the ones who don’t make it to the end.
Herdling is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and PC. A PS5 review code was provided by the publisher.
James O’Connor has been writing about pop culture and games since 2008. He is the author of Untitled Goose Game for Boss Fight Books.
