What Flock Around is
Flock Around is a co-op birdwatching game set at Goose Lake Sanctuary. You walk around in first person with a camera, find birds, and take pictures of them to fill out the park guide book. The sanctuary holds numerous bird species, from the common Robin to rarer and more exotic ones, and each one counts in several poses. If you can see a bird, you can photograph it, so the guide book fills up one snapshot at a time. The tone is light and cartoonish: colorful 3D environments, cute bird designs, and plenty of goofy birds to catch on camera.
Playing it with friends
The game is built as a shared social space. You can go out solo or team up with up to 10 friends, working together to track down birds and get the shots you still need. The sanctuary has a variety of biomes to explore, and you can perform actions and use items to lure species out into the open, which makes splitting up and covering ground a sensible way to fill the book faster. It also works the other way: you can mess with your friends, and photographing each other counts just as much as photographing birds. After a session, you develop the pictures you took and earn money from them, which you spend on outfits so your birder looks the way you want.
Before you start
Character customization is a real part of the loop. You collect cosmetics and dress up your birder to show your personality to the rest of the group, so expect some time spent in menus between outings. Progress comes from filling the guide book with every bird in every pose, which is a long collectathon rather than a short run — rarer species will take more effort and more luring to turn up. The game supports online co-op, so you'll want your friends online to play together. Everything else is straightforward: bring a camera, be patient with the wildlife, and enjoy the walk.