The Flock Will Welcome You On August 21st
215,358,970 members remain.
The Flock [official site] is one of the oddest game in development. It's an online FPS with the art style of a horror adventure and set far in the future, in which you play as a member of the titular pack and fight against others to find a light artifact that transforms you into a slow-moving and vulnerable creature but acts as a deadly weapon. If you reach it and transform, your opponents have to sneak up on you, use their ability to turn to stone when standing still to become immune to the artifact's power, and try to take it from you. In other words, other players become jump-scares in the dark maps.
There's a new trailer below and we now know the release date is August 21st.
As if that weren't enough weirdness, the twist is that once a certain number of games have been played and players have died, the game will be removed from sale. A "climatic ending" event that's yet to be detailed will then start. Once that's over, the game will be shut down. Permanently. Goodbye forever, Flock. That death countdown is now sitting at the top of the main page at 215,358,970 slain enemies to go.
Just how long that will take depends, of course, on sales. That's probably roughly the number of deaths that happen in something as large as Dota 2 or Counter-Strike: GO every day, but Vogelsap will likely have other worries if they get that size of playerbase. I expect it will be a good few months, possibly even years, before a significant dent is made in that total, so you'll have plenty of time. However, the concept is wonderful and I hope it pays off as an idea. I don't really want it to spread, but there are precious few finite things in the modern era.
If you're worried you'll miss out or want to be the first person to tick that counter down, pre-orders are now available via Humble. John was very impressed when he played The Flock in March, praising its simplicity.