The following review will spoil the game Herdling, but if you were considering playing it, just go ahead and do that real quick (it takes like three hours) and come on back.
Herdling, by Swiss game studio Okomotive falls into those genre of games where if you looked at gameplay footage of it, you’d know whether or not immediately if it was your cup of tea. Your Journeys, your Jusants, your Flowers, etc. Not an ounce of dialogue to be had, and nothing mechanically dense. Just you, your heard, beautiful vistas, and super choice score. Is it my favorite game of the year? No, not necessarily, but I really resonated with it.
You start as an unhoused child living in the cold, underneath an underpass, and for some reason, the call of nature beckons you to journey out. On your way you collect, what I can only describe as if Frank Oz invented yaks. You get to name them as you tame them, and they all have little personality flourishes that really help flesh them out and give them individuality. For example I had this little stinker called Paj, and he would constantly get covered in brambles and bullshit and you had to clean him up. You start with a handful and you use a little staff you find to shepherd them. The game ramps up the stress from time to time, having to navigate your crew of fellas around cliff sides, and the most horrific looking owls you can imagine.
The gameplay around these points admittedly turn into a crawl. Instead of vibing out with your pack and enjoying the beauty the game has to offer, the game instead pivots into what feels like the speed and care one has to take when moving a tray stacked high with martini glasses that are filled to the brim. When I made it to the end of the game, I got the achievement that I made it without losing a single member of the herd, so I’m pretty sure they can absolutely perish if you are not careful. I was not ready for that heartbreak so I never experienced it myself, but fair warning.
Where the game really fires on all cylinders are the moments when you and your herd get to just hustle. The game doles out these stampedes between all the slow stressful moments, which makes them feel all the more earned and like a true victory lap. The music swells, and you and your beasties are just trucking through fields of flowers, feeling fantastic.
The thing that is sticking with me the most is the very end of the game however, and to understand that we gotta put on our art history hats and learn a little bit about Arnold Böcklin’s (also Swiss by the way. Coincidence?) Isle of the Dead.
In 1880, this cat was commissioned to make a painting by a widow to honor her husband. The result of which might be some of my favorite paintings ever. Something about the solitary island, laden with dark cypress trees gives me this peaceful reverence towards death and the beauty of “moving on” (whatever that might mean to you).
So, back to Herdling, which has this gorgeous ending stretch following the most harrowing part of the game yet. After weathering this brutal icy winds from the top of the mountain range that is in your view for a majority of game (side note, love when games do this), you finally mount onto one of these suckers and race down the mountain, towards a river delta and a familiar looking island.
You then enter the island, where you and your new family settle into your new home. The camera pans out to several of these islands dotted along this vast environment. It gives a cozy end and could give you the read of someone with no home, abandoned by the community around them, finally finding a place to rest their head with the things around them that love them most.
I couldn’t help but get a more melancholy read on it. I interpret it as a literal death. You, homeless, dying cold and alone, and this was your journey of passing on to the other side. I think my theory is further corroborated by the fact that during stretches of the game, you seem to be chasing after a ghost as well, what I thought was a past shepherd, that has given their power to you, but now I’m pretty sure is just a metaphor for a shepherd of death, guiding all lost souls home.
Anyhoo! The game is short, sweet, and worth your time! Even if sometimes the gameplay is pretty slow, the vibes are immaculate and I really picked up on the metaphor it was putting down. Like in tarot, death is not an ending, but a change. Unfortunately I cannot say that when we pass on we will be forever roaming along a field of blue and red flowers with a pack of animals that trust you implicitly, but it’s a nice thought.
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