FLOCK is a solo game about bird migration. You lead a flock of five birds across six flights and try to get as many of them home as you can. Each bird is a paper cutout with its real cruising speed and a stamina number. The grid is just your formation. If a bird has another bird diagonally ahead of it, it’s drafting and pays no stamina. If it doesn’t, it pays 3. After every flight you roll a die to see if the sky is calm, stormy, or has a predator in it.
The real game will be digital, but we wanted to test the formation idea on paper first.
Playtesting
Michael, Rachel, and I got to test our first prototype today. Our playtesters were great and really seemed to get the idea. We were looking at what I want to see in the game, what can be improved, and what doesn’t work yet. This is only a prototype, so a lot of it helped us brainstorm what our game can turn into.
What I Want to See in the Game
The best news is that players got the main strategy. They put the birds with the most stamina at the front of the formation, where the exposed bird pays the most. That’s the strategy we want the game to teach, so I’m glad it came through without much explanation.
Players also wanted more control. They wanted to pick their own formation, not just a V, and arrange the birds themselves. I like this because it means they were already thinking like the leader of the flock. They also asked whether a bigger flock would make the choices more interesting, and one idea was that two birds of the same type next to each other could gain bonus stamina. I want to try both.
What Doesn’t Work Yet
The movement rules were confusing. Players asked why one bird can’t go directly behind another and still draft, and whether a bird can move to any square or only swap with a neighbor. Someone suggested limiting swaps, maybe to one per turn. I’m not sure yet if a limit would make the game feel more strategic or just more fiddly, so that’s something to test.
The losing conditions were also unclear. It wasn’t obvious what makes you lose or where the challenge comes from. Right now your score is how many birds arrive, and there isn’t a clear point where you’ve lost.
This is only a prototype, but it already helped us figure out what the game can become. The real version is digital. You build your flock along a branching map, the map decides which birds you can recruit and which dangers you face, and your formation decides how well the flock survives them. Next I want to rebuild the instructions so they start small, show the hazard before the move, and playtest again.
