Herdling Review

Short. Beautiful. Frustrating.

Written by Dallas

Posted on: August 21st, 2025

Developed by Okomotive

Published by Panic

Released on August 21st, 2025

(PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch)

I’ve never been so torn. On one hand Herdling is reminiscent of a game from ThatGameCompany or Giant Squid with the Okomotive flavor that is their prominent style found in the Far series, and I mean this with the highest of compliments. But on the other hand it has technical issues and an abysmal control scheme that nearly broke me.

You can and you should,

pet the Calicorns.

Herdling has no dialogue. Its story is told through gameplay, small cutscenes, and environmental storytelling. You move from biome to biome guiding your herd of Calicorns (the beasties that make up your herd) home. Along the way you’ll have to avoid varying obstacles, solve environmental puzzles, and lightly take care of your herd. It’s a pretty straightforward experience but it all works and flows well from section to section as you can easily finish Herdling in a sitting or two, as the length is between 4-5 hours.

What made Herdling worthy of my time was the simple act of naming my Calicorns. See, whenever you rescue or help a Calicorn, they join your herd, and you’re asked to name them. This was novel to me at first, but as the game went on, you grow attached to your herd by dawning decorations on them, cleaning them, petting them etc. And you’ll realize how much you care for them once they’ve been injured, and if you’re not too careful they can perish. NOTHING, and I mean nothing feels worse than seeing “Pabu has died.”

Unfortunately, if you’re like me, the reason a Calicorn will die is due to the poor controls. Luckily, I was quick enough to reload my game before the next autosave, but it was still aggravating knowing they only died because the controls had failed me. Now I think Okomotive did their best for the type of game they were making. As I sit here writing this, I struggle to think of a solution, as changing the control scheme could alter the gameplay style.

Udderly stunning. Do Calicorns have udders? I hope so for the sake of this joke.

From start to finish, I fought the controls. You have full control over your character from a 3rd person perspective, but you must control your entire herd from this perspective as well. You guide the Calicorns from behind, directing them where to move and using button prompts to speed them up, slow them down and make them stop. My issues lie in that it doesn’t feel good navigating your herd at all. Funnily enough it’s like the Calicorns have a mind of their own, and won’t do what you ask of them even though you swear you hit the prompt. Having to repeat yourself to get the input to work, only for it to over correct itself because you mashed the button to stop your Calicorn from meeting its fate.

That being said. Traveling with your herd, being swept away in its beautiful score and being in awe of the surroundings is such a wonderful pleasure. I just think with just a little more polish it could’ve stood amongst the greats in this genre. And who knows, with some feedback and patches after launch it could get there.

Water is only for traversing. Missed opportunity to bathe the Calicorns.

Performance wise, it’s lacking in the options department. I also had a weird issue when trying to play on a 4K 60FPS monitor, where the frame rate was nearly unplayable. When switching over to my ultrawide 1440p monitor it was suddenly fixed, keeping a nearly locked 60 with its vsync option on. Strangely there is no option for setting your FPS, and is tied to said vsync option. To my surprise it actually fully supported ultrawide and made it all the better for it. Console performance may fair better due to less variables, but this was just my experience on PC. I’d personally like to see more settings added, as it could help alleviate some of these oddities I had.

There’s not much more to say about Herdling. It’s at its best when it works, and you’re allowed to get lost in the beauty it creates. If you’re fan of short narrative experiences and can be forgiving with its controls, then you’ll feel right at home here. Though you might enjoy your time more later on if you wait for some quality of life patches to come through.