Herdling’s Calicorns Turn Simple Goat-Herding Into a Surprisingly Emotional Adventure

Herdling is a single-player adventure from developer Okomotive that focuses on moving a small herd of goat-like animals, called Calicorns, across a largely empty, post-urban world. The game emphasizes simple interaction systems, exploration, and short checkpoints where players can rest and care for their herd.

Who made Herdling and platform info
Core mechanics: herding, naming, stampede gauge and refill methods
Interaction systems: feeding, petting, decorating, campfires at checkpoints
Environmental hazards and enemies
Visual and audio presentation notes and a developer trailer link

Developer and platform

Herdling was developed by Okomotive, the studio behind Far: Lone Sails and Far: Changing Tides. The game is available for Windows PC. The writer of the source material played the game on a Steam Deck using a controller.

Premise and characters

You play as Via, who wakes under an underpass in an abandoned city and meets a horned, red-eyed companion called a Calicorn. Players can name Calicorns manually or accept a randomized name suggestion from the game. As the journey continues, players collect additional Calicorns to form a herd.

Core gameplay mechanics

Herdling’s primary mechanic is moving both the player character and the herd through environments while keeping the animals together. Key facts about the system include:

The herd must generally be guided from behind to move them forward.
The game features a stampede or “run” mechanic with a gauge shown on-screen.
The number of available runs increases with herd size, and the gauge is refilled by in-game actions.
Gauge refill methods include running through fields of blue flowers and feeding Calicorns blue fruit.

Interaction and bonding systems

Players can build relationship data with individual Calicorns. Concrete interaction features are:

Feeding Calicorns blue fruit to fill the stampede gauge and increase bond information.
Checking a herd status page to see titles or descriptors assigned to animals (for example, one Calicorn is listed as “rascal”).
At checkpoints, players can collect sticks, start a fire, pet and clean Calicorn fur, and decorate horns with found trinkets.

Environments, visuals and audio

The game moves players through a range of locations, including a dark, deserted city, meadows, forests, glades and cavernous landmarks. Checkpoints appear in places such as abandoned garages, caverns with wall art, and open fields. The journey includes changes in lighting (for example, Calicorns appear darker in the city and appear auburn in sunlight). Music and ambient tracks change with location and can swell during transitional moments.

On longing and cultural reference

The source references the Welsh word hiraeth, and links its common description on Wikipedia, which summarizes it as a “homesickness that’s tinged with grief and sadness, a yearning for something of the past.” For background, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiraeth.

Hazards and enemies

Herdling includes environmental hazards and creatures that can disrupt the herd. Concrete examples from play include:

Paths that may crumble underfoot.
Giant owls presented as predators targeting Calicorns.
Physical obstacles in the city such as fences, traffic cones and abandoned cars that can be knocked over when herding.