In our game Herdling, you leave the city behind to start an adventure through the mountains. But you won’t be alone. Always with you: your herd of fantastical mountain creatures.
Your task is to guide and shepherd these creatures, called “Calicorns”. Together you journey through autumnal forests and vast mountainscapes full of treacherous pathways, encountering mysterious discoveries and breathtaking views. You have to learn how the Calicorns behave, how you can responsibly guide them, and explore everything they are capable of.
The herd of Calicorns is the core of the game. The player as the protagonist, named Via, has to move with and around the Calicorns to guide them into the correct direction, and help them find their way around obstacles and dangers. This careful navigation in hazardous environments takes turns with wide open plains that allow the herd to stampede – a powerful, exhilarating movement that can also take the Calicorns up otherwise slippery slopes when used strategically.
Every once in a while, you find a spot to rest, where you can care for and bond with your Calicorns. You can tend to their wounds, clean their fur, play with them and sit around a cozy bonfire to get some well earned rest. On your adventures, you can find various ornaments and keepsakes to decorate your herd.
From a developer’s perspective, the herd guiding was the first thing we started working on and we never stopped improving it until the end of development. Our main goals were to make the guiding feel intuitive and natural, and to make the Calicorns feel alive enough to care for them. These two goals can be very opposing in many cases, so it was all about the right balance.
To create a flowing and fun gameplay we wanted to avoid the feeling of an escort mission or an obstacle course. The player’s motivation should be the enjoyment of pressing forward, and not to avoid obstacles. To achieve this, there are different kinds of flowers on the ground that give the Calicorns the ability to stampede or to interact with specific parts of the environment. The stampede can then be used situationally to move faster and to charge through obstacles, such as sturdy shrubbery, deep snow or steep slopes.
To make the herd believable, it was important to decide on the right size of the herd: Too many Calicorns would make the individual animals unimportant. Too few and it wouldn’t feel like a powerful herd.
To create a bond with the Calicorns, each had to be distinguishable in some way. So, they have different fur colors and patterns, horn shapes, body sizes and even behave differently in some situations. We also wanted to let you give each Calicorn a custom name as you tame them to further strengthen that bond and sense of individuality. Later in the game, you will have a mighty herd of Calicorns, each with a different look, name and decorations … and experiences made together during the journey.
Now, at the end of development, we’re very proud of our herd of Calicorns and everything we went through during the last few years. Every time we play the game – which we do a lot – we’re excited to go on an adventure with a new herd and run across mountain ridges with them. And we hope you will too when Herdling releases this Summer 2025. Wishlist today.
Herdling
Panic
Herdling is a brand new adventure from Okomotive, creators of the atmospheric and acclaimed FAR games, and Panic, publishers of Firewatch. Head out on a grand alpine expedition with a herd of loveable beasts, as you ascend a mountain path, encounter eerie dangers and surprising obstacles, and forge your way to the mystery at the summit.
