Flockers Team17 puts woolly jumpers on Lemmings

It’s been clear over the years that Team17 has an affection for sheep. The woolly wonders (albeit exploding ones) have featured in it's worms series for nearly two decades, and now they’ve got a game of their own.

Let’s not try to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes: Flockersis quite clearly an homage to addictive ‘90s puzzler Lemmings, with you in charge of making sure a group of mindless creatures can make it to the end of each stage without coming to any harm .

As in Lemmings, the sheep are constantly on the march and the only way to have an influence on their behaviour is to assign abilities: jumping, climbing, exploding usual sheep stuff.

There are a few minor differences there’s more of an emphasis on stacking sheep in certain ways to create walls or staircases that influence the others’ movement but for the most part these are very much Lemmings in sheep’s clothing.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, of course. If you’re going to be clearly influenced by a game, it might as well be one that was immensely popular in its day, and it’s clear that Flockershas the same dark sense of humour. much of the game involves ensuring that your flock doesn’t get near the comically oversized torture devices strewn around each stage: mess up and you’ll end up guiding them into all manner of gruesome contraptions, with comically grim results.

The main issue is that Flockersoccasionally feels like a game that’s trying to jam a Pc-shaped peg into an Xbox one-shaped hole. moving your cursor around with the left stick and trying to control the camera with a combination of the right stick, the triggers and the D-pad can be fiddly, and though you get used to it, it never feels as intuitive as using a mouse would.

Flockers is entertaining enough, and getting three stars on every level will take you a long time. but it just feels so clunky that much of the time (especially during particularly frantic and complex stages) you’ll feel hindered by its awkward controls.