Herdling

Much like Fumito Ueda, for its third major release Okomotive has wilfully ignored the old adage about working with children and animals.

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Indeed, Herdling's opening initially comes off as an urban twist on The Last Guardian: our first objective involves taming a strange-looking creature that combines elements of real-world animals (in this case, yak-like ungulates) with a dash of the fantastical. The stone floor of a jail cell has been replaced by a mattress beneath a noisy overpass, while our young protagonist's first encounter with the large beast that will be with them for the rest of their journey involves prying a bucket from their nose with a stick instead of plucking arrows from its flank. Taming this fellow is rather more straightforward, too: simply hold the topmost face button down for a few seconds to bring the calicorn under your command. In truth, this is probably for the best, since your job, as the title suggests, isn’t to guide just one of these creatures through the world, but several.

This city-set tutorial has its moments – such as when a more timid calicorn cowers beyond the influence of your now-magical guiding stick, requiring the reassuring presence of his kin to be coaxed out of hiding – but otherwise gets