One guarantee you always expect to get when purchasing a video game is that it’s a purchase for life, you’ll always be able to play it when you feel like it. Vogelsap’s The Flock is an exception to this rule.
Developed in Unity, The Flock is an “asymmetrical multiplayer thriller” where you play as one of the agile hunters that make up the ‘flock’. However, your goal is to become the carrier who is then hunted by the flock. You must then shine a light upon various objects whilst also fending off hunters trying to pry the artifact from your soon to be cold, dead hands.
The twist here comes in the form of dying: every single death will subtract one from The Flock’s population. Once that population reaches zero, that’s it. The game will no longer be purchasable. Players who participated in The Flock up to this stage will then be able to partake in the yet to be revealed finale. Afterwards, The Flock disappears from existence, being simply a memory for those who played.
It started as a university project by two Games & Interaction students, Jeroen van Hasselt and Bo Zonneveld, attending the HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It quickly “ran out of control” and a closed alpha during October 2014 saw them hit over 4,500 players.
The Flock is scheduled for a Q3 2015 release however an exact date hasn’t been confirmed.
