Herdling, a new game out today by FAR developer Okomotive, is one of those games with a made-up word title that nevertheless lets you know exactly what it is. In this short game, you play as a young child who finds some big fuzzy creatures and herds them out of the city toward the wilderness.
This piece originally appeared 6/7/25 and covered Herdling’s demo. We’ve updated it to include impressions of the full game.
The game calls them "Calicorns," which feels like a pretty good name: they are sort of calico-patterned, and they have big curly horns. They'll run from you or ignore you at first, but once you tame them, you can give them a name and add them to your herd. (You can also let the game select a name for you.) To steer them, you have to stand behind them and encourage them in the direction you want them to go, and you can also make them walk slowly or run. All of this movement really feels like herding, as opposed to just having some companions who follow you around.
I found this herding a little clunky to get my head around at times--you have to be aware of where you want the herd to go, not just where you want to go, and position yourself and set waypoints in light of it. This sometimes divided my attention from taking in Herdling’s vast, changing landscape or figuring out where we were headed, and I’ll admit that I cursed out my herd more than once when they wandered into rocks or dead ends at what was 100% my command. But this helped me remember that Herdling is about the journey of my herd and me, not just me, and made my trip with them feel like a big responsibility.
That trip is not without its dangers; there are giant birds, as seen in the trailer, and pitfalls in the landscape that can swallow up members of your herd. The first time I lost a Calicorn I was shocked, and the sting never wore off when I lost what was probably more of them than I should have when I’d try to rush my herd to safety. A few moments in the game require relatively precise steering in high stakes situations; none of it is too difficult, though I found it a little tough in late-game snowy areas to see my waypoints against the white ground on the small screen and pared-down graphics of my first-generation Switch. The game definitely needs these moments of tension to keep it from being too slow, even when watching a Calicorn slip off the edge of a mountain was more than my heart could take.
There’s also some light puzzle-solving, in terms of navigating your herd through obstacles, calling on them to help you push items around, or using them to solve puzzles that hint at the mysterious nature of the Calicorns or your destination. I didn’t always understand the logic behind some of these tasks, and on occasion the prompts didn’t work quite right, though it was usually fairly clear what I was required to do. These mellow, often strange puzzles add to Herdling’s unique vibe, where nature and mysticism meet the mundane reality of trying to get a bunch of animals to go where you want them to.
But mostly, you just encourage your furry guys along as the dismal city gives way to beautiful countryside and a mountain looms enticingly in the distance. You follow railroad tracks, cross streams, and navigate twisting mountain paths. Your Calicorns make huffing sounds and wag their goat tails, and you can feed them fruit, pet them, decorate their horns, and throw balls for them as all of you amble along. Even in tense moments, there's no real rushing your herd, and the game was most affecting when I stopped trying to look ahead and just focused on what was around us.
Herdling is mostly a lovely, relaxed affair, with a responsive soundtrack and beautiful vistas to take in. The journey feels very physical, from the nature of your herd as a group of individuals to the landscape you navigate, and I felt the presence of each one of my precious, pettable children as we made our way to a better place than we started.
