Flock Around

Flock Around drops the player, alone or with friends, into a sanctuary of distinct biomes, marsh, forest, cherry blossom grove, snowfield, and more, with a camera and a field guide to fill in. The pitch is simple: walk around, spot birds, take photographs good enough to score three stars, and use the proceeds to buy better lenses and unlock new areas. It's part of a recent wave of low-stakes "friend-shaped" multiplayer games built around a cozy shared activity rather than competition or survival, and with nearly 2,000 reviews behind it sitting at Overwhelmingly Positive, it's clearly found an audience. Reading through a large sample of that reception in depth shows a game whose central hook is executed with real care, but whose surrounding content and business decisions draw specific, repeated criticism even from reviewers who otherwise recommend it.

The birds are the whole show, and they're genuinely good

Almost without exception, the praise in this sample centres on one thing: the birds themselves. Reviewers who identify as wildlife biologists, ornithology students, career bird photographers, and hobbyist birders independently and specifically credit the developers with getting bird behaviour right, woodpeckers actually peck wood, calls are described as accurately reproduced (with one reviewer noting the sound design was built by slowing down and re-pitching real birdsong), and species are recognisable enough that some players report being able to identify birds by ear before seeing them. Several reviewers who "know nothing about birds" report the game teaching them names and calls they now recognise outside the game, and more than one says they've started noticing real birds differently since playing. That's an unusually specific and consistent form of praise, and it's the throughline connecting almost every positive review in the sample, whether from lifelong birders or complete newcomers.

The co-op layer built around that hook lands well for most players too. Boosting a friend onto a ledge, yelling out a sighting before it flies off, or using a friend as an improvised perch are described repeatedly as the source of the game's charm, and several reviewers specifically praise how low-pressure and inclusive the design is, nobody needs to contribute equally or know anything about birds going in for the experience to work. For the price, several reviewers call it an easy recommendation for a relaxed evening with friends.

A short loop stretched thinner by paid DLC

Set against that is a consistent complaint about how little there is to actually do. Multiple reviewers describe completing every biome, in some builds finishing the whole game, within two to five hours, and note that once every bird and area is unlocked there's little pull to return beyond chasing the small number of rarer "shiny" bird variants. The progression system draws specific criticism too: one detailed review counts only two meaningful upgrades gating access to better photos, with most purchases doing little to change how the game plays, and several reviewers describe camera zoom upgrades as effectively mandatory rather than optional, since the game's photo-scoring system penalises anything not large and centred in frame regardless of how interesting the shot actually is.

That short runtime becomes a sharper complaint in the context of the game's DLC. A number of reviewers, several of whom otherwise praise the base game, specifically call out Friend Shaped Games for releasing paid map-expansion content not long after launch, arguing that the existing biomes already feel small and that new areas should have been added as free updates rather than sold separately. It's not a universal objection, and it doesn't appear to have dented the overall review score much, but it's specific, recurring, and comes from reviewers who otherwise liked the game enough to recommend it, which makes it worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as background grumbling.

Missing tutorials, missing regional birds

Two further, well-corroborated gaps round out the criticism. First, several reviewers report the game offering little to no explanation of its own systems, new players report being confused for the first half hour or more about how seeds and whistles are meant to lure specific birds, and the photo-sorting screen used to review and keep shots is repeatedly described as disorganised once a player has taken more than a handful of photos. Controller support draws specific complaints too, with menus reportedly switching back to a mouse cursor unpredictably during controller play. Second, and repeated by reviewers from New Zealand, Australia, and Europe specifically, the bird roster is drawn almost entirely from North American species, leaving non-US players unable to recognise birds from their own back yard, a gap several reviewers frame as an obvious and reasonable direction for future content, ideally free content, rather than a fundamental flaw.

Final Verdict

Flock Around gets its central idea right: the birds are lovingly, specifically, accurately made, and the low-stakes co-op built around photographing them genuinely works as a relaxed way to spend time with friends. But this is a thin game stretched over a short runtime, with light progression, an unexplained set of core systems, a bird list that only really serves North American players, and a paid DLC rollout that a meaningful slice of its own reviewers consider premature given how small the base content already feels. It's an easy recommendation at its low price for an evening or two, but players expecting real depth, or hoping to recognise birds from their own region, should go in with expectations calibrated accordingly.