Flock
Summary
Just landing this summer , Flockis a completely alone kind of creature pick up adventure , drive instrumentalist soaring through the sky on birdback as they discover strange animals across an open cosmos . The Modern liberation come from developer Hollow Ponds , which is led in part by Ricky Haggett and Richard Hogg , in conjunction with indie favorite publishing company Annapurna Interactive , cognise for game likeStrayandWhat clay of Edith Finch . Available in both individual player and co - op , the rubric extend a fantastical approach to fauna where player can compile a colorful , ever - changing flock .
Both Haggett and Hogg have a retentive history in game , much of it working as a squad . The pair antecedently released the experiential artistry titleHohokum , organizational puzzlerWilmot ’s Warehouse , and story - drivenI Am Dead , all of which vary in their mechanics and style but hold lawful to one invariable : a want of armed combat and overly stressful gameplay . This has perhaps never been more true than with their latestcritically - acclaimed releaseFlock , which has been met with glowing reviews praising its serene nature and immersive , detailed environments .
Developers Ricky Haggett and Richard Hogg , antecedently behind games like I Am Dead and Hohokum , discourse their approaching colorful herding game Flock .
Screen Rantinterviewed Ricky Haggett and Dick Hogg to discuss crafting a world filled with originative creatures , their biggest divine guidance , and what ’s next for the developer duo .
Crafting The World Of Flock
Designing Quirky Creatures & A Fantasical - Yet Grounded - Environment
Screen Rant : I ’ve gotten to see more of how every animal has these really specific crotchet and their calls and their world-wide behaviors and that form of thing , and they ’re so wide-ranging and creative . I ’m rum if you Guy found yourself watch out a lot of nature shows or anything like that to get inspired for unusual creature conduct , or was it all just sort of constitutional world in that heed ?
Ricky Haggett : I think we probably look on a bunch of that stuff and nonsense anyway . I know that I do , pretty certain you do as well , Dick .
Richard " Dick " Hogg : Well , kind of . Ever since I was a small child , I ’ve always been really into nature stuff . I do watch some stuff , but I do n’t really watch the bountiful just the ticket like David Attenborough - narrated kind of material . I am not a immense fan of that , if I ’m honest .
That in high spirits production hooey , I ’m not a huge fan of , but I watch lots of hooey like Springwatch . Do you have an equivalent of Springwatch in America ? It ’s a affair we have here that befall , and it ’s like every nighttime for three week . It ’s all alive footage of birds on their nest and clobber like that .
Oh , that sound awesome .
Dick Hogg : It ’s almost like the broadcast flair is closer to skylark than it is to -
Ricky Haggett : Or like realism TV .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , it ’s like nature with pundits and bouncy cameras and stuff . That ’s what I have it off . material like that is what I watch a lot of .
Ricky Haggett : You ’re not so into the contrived narratives that those layer over the top of nature documentary .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , that ’s exactly ripe . I love David Attenborough , think he ’s awesome , but I retrieve those contrived narratives a bit - they ’re constantly try on to inject more aroused storytelling into nature than there in reality is in real [ animation ] .
I do n’t want to be too down on it , but yeah , I do n’t ascertain much of that stuff . And Becky , my married woman , wo n’t look out it at all . Anything where there ’s animal being ripped aside by tigers or something , she just wo n’t watch out that . In damage of the secret plan , I have sex bird check and I love proceed out into the existent populace and try out to fleck creatures , andI get really worked up about animate being - hoot particularly - that I ’ve seen in the tangible world , and I guess that ’s a massive influence on this secret plan .
Ricky Haggett : Yeah , it was rooted in existent experiences from real life . I think , also , there was a coming together point . It was like : what ’s fun ? What can we achieve in this video recording plot where we desire people to have unlike experiences of the creatures and different way they find them that both form as a video game car-mechanic , but you could have people try and work out out , " Oh , there ’s a new matter to do here , " but that does n’t feel too contrived in video play ? "
Dick Hogg : I never say never , but me and Ricky together have never made a game with force in it . We ’re always looking for things that are like -we do n’t have fighting mechanics or combat mechanic to precipitate back on , so we have to find oneself other things that the player does , other ways for the actor to find affordances with these creatures and interact with them .
Instead of either down them or making them fight each other [ Laughs ] , we have to find other things , and an obvious one is to identify them and incur out what they are and sort of catalogue them and then maybe try and get them to join you . These are the sort of things you terminate up having to explore when you ca n’t have violence .
Ricky Haggett : We did n’t want the idea that you ’re catching them like you are some sorting of zookeeper . That was part the speech we used , but also just the vibration of that experience . and just the whole sense that there are a clustering of unfounded creatures that you ’re charming them by singing to them . They ’ll hang out with you for a bit , but then they ’ll vagabond off and you may call them back later on , but it ’s not quite the same as you reach possession over them .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , I now love that they just drift off . I ’ve interpret a few things where the great unwashed are blab out about the plot , and I ’ve heard a few citizenry remark the fact that the puppet just bequeath eventually in a fashion that is quite go for of that . When we were design the game , that ’s the affair we worried about a lot : would citizenry understand that the brute just leave , and would they feel hunky-dory about that ?
We had earlier versions of the game where the player had some form of control over which ones you lose and which single you do n’t , but we were overthinking it . Part of the vibration is that these brute connect you of their own willing and you charm them . I really like the password appealingness , because you ’re kind of convincing them to join you , and they join you for a bit , and I cogitate it feels natural that they just eventually go , " I ’m off now . "
I conceive one affair that we likely did n’t know when we speak to you two years ago was the identification thing , that was something that I do n’t think we ’d amply arrest down at that full stop . The whole , when you first issue forth across a creature , doing that kind of multiple choice finding out which one it is , that ’s the affair that surprised me- that seems to have become a really democratic part of this biz is doing that . Am I right in saying this , Ricky , that that was quite a late mind , was n’t it ?
Ricky Haggett : Yeah , it was . I do n’t remember when we spoke to Deven last or what state the plot was in . I have n’t go back and read it , but yeah , it by all odds was relatively late . We had a full solve version of the game , which was n’t like that , and then we just decided , " Yeah , allow ’s do this . "
The last clock time that we talk , we speak about favorite animate being in the plot . Ricky , you had say yours was the Gormless Skyfish , and Dick , you said yours was the Balsamic Droop . Have those answers changed at all since then ?
Dick Hogg : Well , they must have , because somebody , the other daylight in another interview , somebody asked us our preferent creature , and my solution was not that . I ca n’t call back what it was now . I still really like the Balsamic Droop , so I ’d happily still go with that . Ricky , can you recollect what I say was my favorite creature ?
Ricky Haggett : No , I remember what I said . I said the Mushroom Sprugs . I guess I care the Sprugs and the Thrips in terms of just being silly , sorcerous fauna , slightly cheeky . I like the ones you deplumate out the ground . I like the Sprugs , I reckon well , as a family , and I guess my favorite is the small one with the mushroom on its head that sort of flap up into the aura when you go near it .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , I think that I remember what I say now , it was the Pied Sprug , the one that disguise itself - this is a heavy raider - because that was one of the last things that I did on the biz , and so that animate being was one of the last brute . We pinch it in at the end . But I love all my baby , there ’s not many that I do n’t care . I ’m broadly happy with them all .
You observe that one of the biggest path that it ’s modify since a couple of yr ago is the actual identifying minigame eccentric thing . What would you say in general are the biggest ways the biz change or acquire as it locomote on ?
Ricky Haggett : Well , another late improver was how you get the song . We went through a farseeing , long menses of trying thing . powerful now in the game , the way the game ended up being was you have your sheep and you put them in meadow , and by eat the Gunter Wilhelm Grass , the sheep expose these little puppet , the Burgling Bewls , who have nicked all the stuff from the encampment that you ’re trying to retrieve , including the song whistle that rent you enamour creatures . Once the sheep have eaten the meadow , then you could see their little noses poking up out of a mess and you jerk them out , and then you get to see what they ’ve squirreled away in the hole .
That was a thing we amount up with relatively latterly , andthere were much more convoluted ways that we were trying to tie sheep to come along or whatever , to skill of the whistle and the things that you require to progress , like you could make your flock grown and stuff . Earlier on it was like a affair where you would have sheep and you put them on meadows so that they would get wooly and you ’d sheer them to get wool , and then you ’d have to expend the fleece to buy various songs , which you also had to learn from song stones around the world .
It was just too many unlike step and too complicated . Generally , I think early on the game was a bit overwhelming with how many dissimilar form of things were happening , and it was a case of take matter away and then add up some new matter in to rule a configuration which was much more square .
Dick Hogg : It is the hard biz I ’ve ever made in terms of that kind of thing , like having all these different imbrication systems that are interdependent with each other , and they have to be as streamlined as you could make it , but they have to finger functionally satisfying and utilitarian .
They have to make sense to the player both in terms of the player knowing what ’s going on , but also in terms of them gibe into the fable of the world and being plausible within - it ’s so many things to ask , really . The master matter is we ’re trying to make the biz palpate fun , and interesting , and nice to fiddle , but also you ’ve get all these other considerateness that are also , " Why ? Why is the player trying to do this ? How do they find out these things ? "
It ’s really heavy and caboodle of very difficult meetings , and we had some quite hard times trying to figure this poppycock out . We had some quite emotional times , I think . I retrieve getting very worked up about this special topic and being really frustrated , because you ’re trying to make it make good sense from all different Angle . I consider what we fall up with the end is about as robust and as simple as we could have get it , and as far as I can enjoin , feel adept to play . We flat off knew it was the right direction when people just understood it in play test .
Ricky Haggett : We terminate up having to make a bunch of cutscenes to sort of sell that as well , the idea .
Dick Hogg : Yeah . Then at the same meter , the other matter that we ’re trying to maneuver into position in amongst all this wad of dissimilar systems is the ending . We ’re trying to think , " What bump at the end of this secret plan ? Is there a big satisfying thing that happens at the end ? How big is it ? How vainglorious of an amazing moment is it ? Is it more of a crushed - cardinal affair ? How does it fit in with the progression of all these other systems and whatever that ’s happening in the plot ? " I call up that was a real relief when we enter out what that was and what the tang of that was going to be .
Ricky Haggett : We were really going to not make it a biz where you ’re like , " This is a lieu that you are save up . “It ’s not , " You are the bomber that ’s move to pull through this dying land , or kill the bad adept . “It ’s much more square and believable than that .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , for the same reason that I do n’t wish David Attenborough infotainment because of the form of faux narrative . I ’ll jubilantly play a telecasting game where you ’re trying to shoot down the bad wizard , but I do n’t want to make one . [ Laughs ] I want to make something that , even though our games are quite weird , I require to make something that feels a routine more plausible and a morsel more relatable .
Ricky Haggett : I opine another thing as well on make this plot , if you go back and look at really early prototypes , generally things were a bit more fantastical , and over clip they became more prosy and more like the literal world . That ’s true of the landscape painting and the art , and it ’s lawful of the write up , and just trying to make a place that feel a bit credible somehow .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , I think if we ’d have save going wee-wee this secret plan , it would ’ve ended up being set on a housing landed estate in the 1970s . [ Laughs ]
Ricky Haggett : [ Laughs ] Just a load of sparrows .
Remind me what part of the UK you guy are in ?
Ricky Haggett : Different moment . I ’m in East London , in Walthamstow .
Dick Hogg : I ’m in Hastings , which is on the south coast . you may see France from here , so really on the south glide .
I think you guys mentioning taking some inspiration from UK places in nature from near where you both are .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , so the game we made before , I Am Dead , was very inspired by this place where I am now . It ’s a sportfishing small town kind of vibration , and that biz , we take up pot of things from here . Flock is n’t so much cheer by anywhere specific .
Ricky Haggett : There ’s lots of reference picture from billet which definitely either are in England or could be in England .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , actually this morning , I was walking my wienerwurst in the place that inspired the grassland in Flock . Specifically this time of twelvemonth , there ’s an region where they do n’t mop the pasture and they take into account it to all go to seed and flower . You think pot is all the same , but then when you let it all grow out and flower , you realize there ’s like five or six different character of pasturage , and they ’ve all got very different variety of flowering .
They ’re not big exciting bloom - they ’re quite low - cardinal flush , but the overall effect is really nice , and you get slim different colors , you get purple while and then patch that are more yellowy . The grassland area in Flock is found on me noticing that and examine to recreate it in a secret plan , and it ’s exactly what it ’s like now at the present moment , so that ’s probably three years of me noticing that and every twelvemonth it get along around .
What was that process like specialise down the biome when you were design the uplands ? How did you make up one’s mind how wide-ranging you wanted those to be ?
Dick Hogg : I matte powerfully that they should be semi - naturalistic in damage of sense plausible place , plausible different area without being too delineate .
Ricky Haggett : There was a cognitive operation at the start , where you drew great deal of different things without thinking too much about how it would all outfit together . Then there was a process of assay to rationalize what the whole map would be like , which went hand in paw with figuring out how many different domain should there even be , and how many cloud levels , because as the cloud level fall , obviously , it reveals more and more .
There was a real surd haggle process of thinking , " Well , we really like these unlike areas that Dick ’s draw , and they want to be somewhere on this function , and that mean they have to be next to each other . " Then there was a sorting of post - rationalization process of see out what that imply in condition of what interim position we might need , and you ended up cook good deal of treatments for like , " This place is n’t exactly the grassland , and it is n’t on the nose the mushroom cloud forest , it ’s this halfway kind of thing . ”
Dick Hogg : Yeah , in between . A favorite hate of mine is games where you go from one area to the other , and it feels like even though you ’re hypothecate to be in an outdoor place , a natural place , it feels like you ’ve gone from one room to the next . The most utmost illustration is game where there ’s like the ice world and the desert world or whatever , but even game that are supposedly more naturalistic , quite often they delineate regions in a mode that does n’t feel very natural to me .
ecologist speak a good deal about things like mosaic ecologies , where on the edge of some woodlands , you get a variety of area where the woodland is easy on its elbow room growing further into the realm that ’s not get woodland . You get this kind of patchy place where it ’s a second like the timber and a bit like the meadow , but perchance there ’s other flora that only exist in those border areas because they ’re like early colonizing plants that then get overtaken by other clobber later on on .
You get these region that are a special area between two braggart areas , you get a zone that ’s slightly different . There ’s a few places in the biz where we did that , and I think that hopefully makes the game feel a morsel more naturalistic . There ’s muckle of places where one biome pops up in a few random places within another - which is , again deliberate - because that come about in the real humanity . If you have a morsel of protection from the wind , you might get an surface area where a different case of plant life is doing well even though it ’s surrounded by something else .
It was n’t all me . Dan , who was the other artist work on the game , he had some input into this , and there ’s one particular sphere of the secret plan where it ’s really get his fingerprint all over it .
Ricky Haggett : Dan Emerson and Sam Wong , who did level design , drop lots of time using the stuff that - so Dick would do draft , and then there ’d be a operation of nominate stuff , and then they would lay it all out and there ’d be a conversation about the places and the neighboring place , but also about the creatures that were there , and there was just a foresightful operation of juggling that clobber around .
Dick Hogg : It ’s not peculiarly natural . The end termination is n’t particularly naturalistic , it ’s still quite fantastical , but hopefully it has a sorting of authenticity to it as well on its own term .
The Biggest Challenges Of Flock
Day/Night Cycles, Dynamic Lighting, & Gameplay Balances
I know this biz marked a muckle of showtime for you in terms of design , like a daylight night cps and having natural lighting . Did you find that to be the prominent challenge , design wise , out of doors of the story that you were just talking about ?
Dick Hogg : Specifically those two things , making a magnanimous open world game with a sidereal day nighttime cycle and naturalistic kindling , was a huge headache for me , until we find a good technical artist , and then it stop to be a headache and became a pleasance .
Ricky Haggett : Yeah , our tech creative person , Richard Whitelock , was astonishing at coming in and being reassuring and talk to us in a sort of technical way about what he was going to do , but not really exposing us to any of the real world of it , and looking at a lot of Dick ’s work and listening to feedback and just get on with name the biz reckon the way it did . Which was n’t him just grabbing the reins and run off in a completely different direction , it was very much -
Dick Hogg : It was very sensitive . Me and another creative person , Lilly Devon , had done initial work on render to figure out how the graphics vogue works in relation to what things are made out of , what materials look like , how textures operate , but also thing like light and atmospherics and stuff like that . We were trying to witness a technical artist for a tenacious time . I add up into this project not know what a technical creative person even was . I ’d never heard of the job claim and did n’t really understand that that ’s a role . Even though we are using Unreal , we are using an railway locomotive that does a lot of this stuff for you , but without someone like Richard , we would n’t have had a cue how to make this biz look nice , really . It is just entirely outside of my expertise at all , and he was absolutely great .
It ’s like with movies - I think a great deal of movie directors are very dependent on a conductor of photography in decree for the picture show to front the way it expect , and I retrieve it ’s a standardised relationship with a technical school artist on a plot like this . Me and Richard work quite closely on it , I think , in term of me scribble over screenshots and him seek to figure out what I wanted and look at reference work and clobber like that . But in term of the art style of this game , that was a vast vexation until we had the person come along who know how to solve that job , and I ’ve stimulate a immense amount of respect for people that do that job , and there ’s not enough of them . It ’s really hard to recover one .
I do n’t know if you know Nelson , the famous admiral in this commonwealth , he splendidly , back in the day when ships were made out of Ellen Price Wood , everywhere he went in England , he ’d have a pocketful of acorn , and he would embed them everywhere so that in the future there ’d be more oak tree trees to make ships out of . I kind of want to do that , but with expert artists . I want to , wherever I go now , if I peach to young people either at college or whatever , I ’m like , " Become a f***ing technical artist , " [ Laughs ] because it ’s a well - pay job . It ’s a well - pay , interesting occupation that the secret plan diligence is just crying out for them .
That ’s my advice to all new mass . I used to get load of emails from people who want to make euphony for television games , andthere seems to be a lot of people who want to be musician in video secret plan , and at one point I was almost tempt to respond back go , " Have you look at becoming a expert artist?“If you require to break into games , put away the musical instruments and study about shaders . If I was in my 20s and starting off in secret plan , I think that ’s in all probability a route that I ’d be looking to go down myself , because I cogitate it is a really , really interesting part of game development .
In terms of specific mechanic for when it comes to the eldritch or very specific things you have to do to discover some creatures , do you have one of those you ’re peculiarly proud of ? I loved deliver to take heed for the yelling of the one little guy rope that are root for out of the ground .
Dick Hogg : Oh yeah , the lilliputian turnip guy rope , a Ground Winnow . That ’s actually a ducky of mine .
Ricky Haggett : I really like just how the vocalizing stuff works . It ’s quite a elementary system , but the manner that they sing in relation to - they know how rarefied they are . They whistle in a rhythmic room . The biz does n’t let a warhead of noisy creatures overmaster the quiet ones . There ’s a little system that ’s figuring all that stuff out that works really well .
Dick Hogg : That ’s a cop out answer , Ricky . What ’s your favorite fauna in terms of how you find it , the car-mechanic ? You ’ve catch to wish the one that ’s sort of invisible , the Rustic that you get to name , the elusive Rustic .
Ricky Haggett : I do like that one a lot .
Dick Hogg : I think that one ’s f***ing amazing . I roll in the hay that .
Ricky Haggett : That ’s great . I also just like camouflage ones . I care the ones that just take you a while to blob , ones that are just blend in in .
Dick Hogg : I call up before in growing we had mess of more complicated ideas of animate being , where you have to maybe detect the egg and then put it somewhere where it gets incubated and then it hatches . We realize that a lot of those ideas are the variety of ideas that they ’re good ideas when you ’re sit thinking about a secret plan in the abstracts , but then when you start out play testing it , you realize that they ’re too complicated , and you ca n’t just do things like that as little one - off clever affair , because you ’re asking too much of the player , really .
Ricky Haggett : Yeah , we did it for the special creatures , for the variety of big progress creatures , but by and large the other creatures are more often than not simpler , I would say . I ’m sort of deliberately forefend some spoilers here .
We have a game we ’re already wreak on - we ca n’t say what that is . Me and Ricky have always got loads of ideas for games , we are always pitching estimation at each other . When we meet up , there ’s always two or three game ideas that we ’re excogitate . - Dick Hogg
I feel like it was a really right balance that you guy struck of the ones that are more out in the open are obvious , having to come up a more long word form one in between the ones that are maybe a short more straight .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , I recollect we all feel really strongly that we wanted some wight that are just ubiquitous and are really gentle to get and just everywhere , because that ’s what nature ’s like - seagulls or sparrow or whatever , you just get these creatures that you see them everywhere and they ’re just part of the textile of the creation .
Like the Basking Bewls that are probably the first creature you see in the plot , they ’re just everywhere and you sort of get used to them . There is an Easter ballock in that there are rare variations . I do n’t know if you agnize that that brute has marking version . Some of them are really rare , and the biz does n’t reward you for finding them , does it , Ricky ?
Ricky Haggett : No , it does n’t acknowledge it at all . Because we realized that as before long as you admit it in any way , there are going to be certain types of players who will then grind away until they get the matter that the game ’s going to say , " Well done , " chuck you on the head for chance the rare thing . It ’s just better to just put that stuff in the game and not tell anyone , and if masses compute it out , cool ; if they do n’t calculate it out , cool .
That ’s something else I really liked about this game , is it was n’t so much the explicit rewards organization all the fourth dimension that a lot of games have . It was more like , " I am actuate to find these brute because they ’re interesting and neat , " not because I ’m actively like , " I ’m belong to reach the next level and I ’m exit to unlock stuff . "
Dick Hogg : Yeah , I trust you ’re right . That ’s exactly what we were take for . I suppose you ’re peradventure flatter us a little bit too much .
I mean , I gave it a 4.5 out of five .
Dick Hogg : [ Laughs ] Yeah , okay , fine , on a really well - known internet site . I desire you ’re correct . I hope that the kind of intrinsical goal of just wanting to find these things because they ’re interesting , not because you get points for it , I hope this game does achieve that .
In term of it being gamey and throw you rewards for doing the affair , it ’s actually the most like that game we ’ve made , I suppose . I recall when we spoke to you two age ago , we talked about how this plot is a kind of a unearthly replacement to Hohokam . We wanted to make a plot that matt-up a lot like Hohokam , but we did n’t want it to be as obtuse and kind of cryptic as Hohokam is , because a lot of people wager Hohokam and just bounced off it because they did n’t know what they were doing , or they discover it frustrating and they wanted a bit more secret plan - iness .
They wanted the game to kind of distinguish them what they were supposed to be doing , " What are my objectives?“We made a witting effort to make this biz feel a moment more like that and be a bit more like there ’s an NPC distinguish you to go and check a thing out over here or there ’s a function . There ’s picayune UI things that tell you , that almost finger like wellness bars or something that enjoin you how successful you are at sorcerous the creatures . We did put a pile of effort into making this game feel more like other games in that deference , have intimate system .
Ricky Haggett : But we did n’t tie progression , for object lesson , to find a sure number of animal . That was a decisiveness I consider we made midway through , where if people just want to get to the end and have an termination , then it ’s comparatively straightforward to do that , but if you require to pass sentence find all the repose of the creatures , that ’s an intrinsic matter that you just make up one’s mind you want to do . If you desire to fill up your sticker Word of getting them all , then cool , but we ’re not go to gate you seeing the ending behind that .
Dick Hogg : I really like game that really communicate well like , " Here ’s the point of feeling like you ’ve fill out the secret plan if you are a unsportsmanlike casual . " [ Laughs ] A game I felt did that quite well was Tunic . I play Tunic enough to finger like , " This was a dainty game . I did n’t devote my animation to it . I enjoyed this plot , I enjoyed being in this world . "
At the point at which I decided to finish Tunic , I do it there was loads more I could have dig into and I could have gone down coney holes . The game communicate that quite obviously to me , but the game also secernate me , " Yeah , this is kind of the end if you ’re a person that wants to get on with their life history . "
Ricky Haggett : Yes , it ’s generous to progress in multiple off - ramps rather than just a expectant , long way of life and only one off - Allium tricoccum at the end when you feel like you’re able to stop .
Dick Hogg : That ’s something I ’d unquestionably think about more in the future with games : how do you give those people coming into your game with different fourth dimension restraint and different levels of idea of what their sense of completing a game is , how do you fulfil all those people as much as you could?I do n’t know .
Looking To The Future
Taking Lessons From Flock & A Slew Of Potential Projects
What do you intend the biggest lessons you guys might be taking from this into whatever your next undertaking might be ?
Ricky Haggett : I ’m super happy with a circle of things about Flock . I think that it feel adorable to encounter . I ’m still work on a patch for some footling bugs and whatnot , and it still sense prissy just to beak the game up and vaporize that boo around in the earth .
I think that make games which just sense per se squeamish in your hands to move the affair around give you so much . It ’s evidently really nice for player as well , but it just gives you so much morale , I think , throughout development . We put so much work and clock time into the experience of just being this hoot that flies around with this flock , but it was totally worth it , I believe .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , game feel is super important . I recall for this project , decidedly , it was really , really important , andI can think of another game that we desire to make , or I definitely want to make , where I think that is something that I ’ll be intend about more .
apparently this just liberate , so you ’re fully justified in just enjoying the present moment of that and sit with that for a minute , but do you have any sort of future imaginativeness of where you ’d wish to go next ?
Ricky Haggett : We ’ve develop a bunch of different idea in the tobacco pipe . We do n’t have a whole one yet . We do n’t have a like , " This is definitely the next fully grown game . "
Dick Hogg : Well , we do in the sense that we have a game we ’re already working on - we ca n’t say what that is . Me and Ricky have always have loading of theme for games , we are always set up ideas at each other . When we see up , there ’s always two or three game melodic theme that we ’re mulling , and then we meet up and we talk about them and cerebrate about how they might wreak . This game was one of those - Flock be as an idea for years before we started function on it as a matter where we ’d be like , " Oh , what about a game about fly ? What about a game where you are a kind of bird ? " That kind of thing . We have probably five or six Google Docs where each one is an theme for a game .
I conceive not everyone ’s like that . I ’ve got a friend who ’s a secret plan developer , and he was saying to me that the citizenry he works with , they ca n’t think about anything else until they finish a secret plan . Then they fetch up , they publish the game and then they set aside themselves to start thinking about what the next one might be , but we are very overlap in the means we mean about material .
Ricky Haggett : Yeah , I cogitate it ’s respectable for morale as well to have next project formulating in your brain before you get to the end of the current one , because there ’s just an inevitable process at the end of finishing a video game where it just becomes like hacker . You ’re just doing all the last bits , and it ’s not fun , and you ’ve just set out to spend months to months fixing microbe and tuning thing and doing all that poppycock that you have to do to transport a game , andit ’s decent to have a matter to be thinking about that ’s the other fun affair you ’re going to do next .
Dick Hogg : Would you say it ’s not fun for you , that last stretch ?
Ricky Haggett : I would say it ’s like 90 % not fun with 10 % of - you ’re decidedly spending some fourth dimension just doing prissy thing that make the game nicer and more polished , and in a game like Flock , you ’re obviously spending a lot of clock time just vanish around going , " Wow , look how great this plot is . " But the task you ’re doing are mostly just like , " Oh , this tutorial breaks if you do this and then this , so we have to fix that . " You ’re just doing that for month . It ’s not fun .
Dick Hogg : One of the last jobs I did on Flock was like that , was not much fun . It was making the map crop decently . But closely the very last thing I did on Flock was one of the funnest jobs on the whole affair , which was drawing all the knitting patterns .
Ricky Haggett : You make unnecessary the graffiti until quite near the end .
Dick Hogg : Yeah , all the graffiti happened quite near the remnant , but all the covers of the knitting patterns that you get , I leave that until quite late , and I just spend a couple of weeks just drawing all those , that was really fun . I guess if you ’re the art guy , you get to do fun thing sometimes .
Ricky Haggett : Yeah , there ’s not a peck of peril in swap out a caboodle of knitting rule art [ Laughs ] , whereas you ca n’t save yourself those kinds of fun jobs doing web computer programming .
Flockis available now for PC , PlayStation console , & Xbox console , and is playable via Xbox Game Pass .
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