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This is rather an epitaph than a review. For this game is dead: there are no players online, the team that made it has disbanded, and it's extremely unlikely that you ever get a chance to play it. Which is a shame, because for the brief period when it was alive I loved every minute of it.
The game's main theme was extinction. The Flock, a race of bony creatures inhabited a dying world. The original version of the game included a population counter -- a number of creatures alive that went down every time one of them died in-game. Once the counter hits zero, the game was supposed to end forever, with a playable epilogue for all the players. Now the counter is gone, which can count as an ending by itself: story-wise it simply means that The Flock has survived the calamity.
The game itself was simple and thrilling: a slightly more complicated game of tag. All players start as The Flock, but somewhere on the level there is an artifact that turns whoever picks it up into a Carrier. Kill the Carrier, and you become it yourself. The Carrier is slow, it lacks the Flock's ability to jump high, and it's killed with a single hit of The Flock's claws, but it posesses the artifact that serves as a flashlight and a weapon at the same time, its light burning The Flock on the run. The Flock is fast, mobile, it can turn into stone or leave a decoy statue to switch places with it later. This combination of abilities turned the game into a player-generated survival horror: The Flock prowl the shadows, making the Carrier wonder where they would strike from, fearing the statues and panicking wherever the Artifact's light suddenly goes dim.
While it's wrong to recommend a dead game, I can't bring myself to give it a thumbs down, because my time with it was nothing but joy, however brief it was. I can only hope that one day a large publisher notices this game and gives it a real chance to shine. Until then -- rest in peace, The Flock, you deserved a better ending.

Meet the Flockers!

Great name, an excellent name for a horror game! It's evocative, right? Birds are weird – carry diseases, vomit all over their babies, have cloacas, flock, etc. Oh, and religious heads often refer to their congregations as their “flock,” which is kind of creepy, cultish when you think about it. So the name works fabulously, we've established that.

Concept is pretty cool too: twisted humanoids hunting one another, fighting one another with light in a twisted game of Red Light Green Light with a finite number of lives. Very novel!

And the concept artwork? Beautiful, freaky, brilliant. Absolutely!

“So why is The Flock a steaming pile of dog ♥♥♥♥?” A hypothetical person might ask.

Fortunately for you I spent $17 USD so I can find out and you don't have to!

First off, it looks the part of steaming dog ♥♥♥♥. Now that's a bit harsh of me; it doesn't look BAD, but it certainly won't be winning any monster beauty pageants. The models look goofy whether they're standing still or in motion. They just look silly; like decayed, neutered necromorphs with a slapdash texture job. The three maps currently available all sort of look the same – you've seen one gray, blocky, near linear map, you've seen them all.

Secondly, it isn't scary. Now if that isn't the kiss of death for an asymmetrical horror multiplayer game I don't know what is. I mentioned in the paragraph previously that the models all look goofy, but on top of that there appear to be no death animations for carrier and flockers alike. You'll just be minding your own business or stalking some carrier and suddenly poof, the screen goes white and you're either dead or a carrier.

Well that's no good – smacks of rushed laziness.

Thirdly, the titular flock appears to have flown the coop. No one is playing. Now to be fair this could change. In a few hours the word might get out and The Flock's population will explode!

But we don't live in Pretend Land, no. We live in cold, hard Realityville where the meals are infrequent and the winters are harsh.

Fourthly, it isn't fun! It just isn't fun to sprint around the aforementioned gray maps, attacking gray beings with no death animations, to grab a Portal light gun to point at doors and gates.

You know what I think? I think The Flock is one precarious step above being a scam. “Buy this game with a trivial finite lives system! If you don't it will be gone forever!”

Because the developers think you're all a bunch of hoarding, hyperconsuming man-babies that will grab a questionable product because one day it might be gone.

I promise you, PROMISE YOU, that The Flock's population will never hit zero.

Because ♥♥♥♥-all people will play this ugly, rushed drek.

I can in no way recommend this game.
EDIT: In case people judge this review by my playtime, I've seen everything there is to the game. I played all maps, played both creatures, toyed around with all the abilities and mechanics all in a whopping 30 minutes. If that doesn't say something about the content in the game I don't know anymore.

There's no sense of actually accomplishing anything. You just run around as flock, grab whoever is holding the torch thing and run shining your light at balls until you get killed yourself. That's all there is to it. Additionally there is only 3 maps from which 1 is fairly big and the 2 other rather small.

Matches can take as little time as 5 minutes and are not exciting at all.
It actually looks like the developers were so excited about the concept of killing off the game when a certain amount of people die that they actually forgot to put content in the game, or bother fixing whatever 'content' that's already in because there's several bugs ranging from flock getting launched up in the air to text issues.

They put a counter on the game's lifespan but I feel like it's gonna die sooner than the counter reaches 0

If you disagree with this review I'd like to know why, give me some arguments in the comments.

This game is a horrible disaster. This plays like an early access title with bugs included. Coding isn't even completed in certain parts. But don't let this deter you, however! I look at it as an Easter egg: which string of code won't be found in this part of the game? Also, the "Population" aspect of this game is ridiculous. The limit will never hit 0, same as how updates will likely never occur. This game is horrendously overpriced for the current stage it's in.

Edit: I have returned! For 20 minutes I sat in a queue, waiting to play. This game has died. Do not waste your money with this game.

The game seems like a tech demo or a proof of concept or something. Its too simple. You can see and do everything the game has to offer in the first 15 minutes of playing, then its just repetition, which feels like grinding.

It seems the developers made an overly simple, boring game then thought to themselves "This is only 1/10th of a game. How can we get people to buy it anyway?" so they introduced the population thing as an after thought.

I think the population thing is a really cool idea... IF the game implementing it is compeling enough to keep people playing. As it is now, this game will die of lack of people playing like gunmonkeys WAY before the population hits zero.

2 out of 10. Might have worked as a free mobile game that you download and play one evening, then forget you have installed on your phone.

I really loved the concept of the game, and felt like the price was right for a game plus a code. After roughly an hour of gameplay, it was evident the game isn't quite finished. Popping textures and muddy controls were not appropriate for a fast paced horror style game. I would love to see the concept grow, but for now, I cannot recommend this title.

The Flock comes with an interesting hook in that it'll go offline and become unavailable for sale once the population counter ticks down to zero. The game itself is something similar to "juggernaut" game modes from other online games, but with an emphasis on stealth.

When you spawn into a match, each player tries to find and attain the light. Once attained that player will become the "Carrier" and every one else will remain as a "Flock". It features an asymmetrical cat and mouse style of gameplay where it's every one on the Carrier. You can gain points through killing flocks by shining the light on them when they make an advance, completing objective points, or simply through holding the light as long as possible. The Flock have a variety of ways to ambush the carrier. They can stand still which will put them into a "Petrified" mode giving full immunity to the light, they can also create decoys that they can teleport to at their will, and can give a howl that'll buff other Flocks around them. The core of this is pretty fun and interesting when you first jump into the game, though with this as the only game mode it can become repetitive after a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzq490ghbP8
The Flock is also pretty easy on the senses. The environmental and character designs are suiting to the mood and atmosphere, with ancient looking dilapidated environments, and eerie music and sound effects. The Flock does a good job at communicating it's dark themes.

Though the hook of a permanent end to the game, and the core gameplay being initially enjoyable and interesting, the fun of "The Flock" doesn't last long. There are only 3 maps available and only 1 game mode. The game becomes very repetitive very quickly. There's also no incentive to continue playing with a huge disconnect from the mechanics and the perma-end concept. None of the mechanics would be affected if the perma-end system wasn't in place, and because of this, the immediacy that the game tried to force on the player falls flat. I feel like most players would be bored of the game before the countdown would become relevant. You can experience every thing there is to experience in a matter of a couple of matches. Since that's the case, what's the incentive for players to protect the global population? Why should players care if it'll end permanently if the game can't hold their interest to see it to the end? There's not even a record system to track how much a player have contributed to the population countdown, making the game's premise feel pointless.

Besides the design flaws with it's perma-end system, and the lack of variety, the Flock also suffers from a myriad of technical issues. The game sometimes crash from alt-tabbing or when a match ends and sends the player back to the lobby. The graphics setting's effectiveness is questionable and while playing with those settings, my game refuses to go fullscreen, It's stuck on windowed mode. I've also experienced lobbies that refuse to start the game, and games where the goal (the light) refused to spawn in. To say the least, The Flock has a lot of problems.

Overall The Flock has an interesting foundation, but it's under developed, under conceptualized, and suffers from both technical and design flaws.

Pros:
- Good looking and sounding
- The one game mode is fun for a little while

Cons:
- Buggy
- No connection between the perma-end concept to it's mechanics
- Repetitive
- Lacks content

[In the forums I'm hearing the devs are planning on adding content and fixing some bugs in the near future. I may come back and make edits to my original impression based on the changes.]

it feels like the devs didn't even beta test this once.
there are graphic glitches and you can't even turn on fullscreen mode
there are so many "string not found" errors
the devs need to make a clean sweep of this game's errors before it's even playable

3/10

The Flock is a game in which you fight in the skins of monsters together with 4 other players over a lightbeamgun. If you dont have the lightbeamgun, you hunt the lightbeamgun carrier together with the rest. If you do have the lightbeamgun, you have to activate certain portalstones with them to earn points, and you can kill the monsters with the lightbeam, as long as they arent turned to stone by standing still. In order to keep the lightbeamgun lightbeaming, you have to keep moving.

It's a great concept, yet a little repetative.. On top of that, this game is far from finished.
I've played many Alpha en Beta games, and they were more complete than this game.
I honestly dont understand why it was released already.

In the first menu I encountered after opening the game, half of the letters were missing. The second menu, there's some options like
(NO STRING ATTACHED) YES and (NO STRING ATTACHED) NO

Then, after joining a lobby, and the game telling me the match will start in 60 seconds, I wait 60 seconds.
And another 60 seconds. I wait a total of 600 seconds. Still nothing happens..

In its current state, don't buy the game. I will check in a few months to see if the game got improved by updates and if so, i will update my review.