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"  Flockers - the first new franchise by Team 17 in over a decade - has been revealed as a Lemmings-style puzzler set in the Worms universe. Billed as a &amp;quot;new twisted take on a traditional A to B puzzler&amp;quot;, it sees players rescuing the sheep from Worms before&amp;#039;s they&amp;#039;re packaged up in a factory and used as weapons on a battlefield. Players guide them past deadly traps by giving them new abilities, allowing them to leap from ledges, run up walls and explode to open new paths.  Sheep can also be arranged in formations to reach \u2013 or avoid \u2013 certain areas. Triggering certain buttons causes blades and buzzsaws to spring to life, slicing apart nearby sheep, but with the right formation, sheep can clamber over one another to avoid the button and certain death. Other situations see you make formations to stem the flow of sheep, halting their progress just for a moment so they miss the fall of a trap at the right time. Physics also has a role in avoiding traps. One example sees you help a sheep climb up a wall so he can trigger a button - which lowers an elevator that holds the rest of the flock.  However, he must be quickly stopped before he collides into a nearby cog. If he doesn&amp;#039;t, it will gently roll down a series of hills, gathering speed, before it arrives as the lift appears at the bottom, crushing the rest of the sheep. While Worms and Lemmings have a dark sense of humour, Flockers takes it a step further, with sheep crushed underneath a set of weights instantly turning into a fine, red mist that sprays the factory floor around it, while giant folks will plunge down and gruesomely skewer sheep on the tips of their forks. Producer Dave Wood said this tone and visual style has been described as &amp;quot;Tim Burton-esque, macob, and steampunk&amp;quot; during development at Team 17. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a juxtaposition of these really cute characters that you&amp;#039;re trying to save, and getting through this really perilous environment,&amp;quot; he told Digital Spy.      &amp;quot;If you can bring in some really brutal deaths then, that&amp;#039;s going to enhance that sense of danger and want to save the poor little sheep.&amp;quot; Team 17 is interested in playing into this morbid tone by looking into objectives that challenge players in killing - instead of saving - as many as many sheep as possible. A level editor, meanwhile, can also enable players to create and share their &amp;quot;own twisted ways&amp;quot; of killing sheep through Steam Workshop. Flockers will debut through Steam Early Access \u2013 a first for the studio \u2013 in the next few months, giving Team 17 feedback to help inform the game&amp;#039;s future.  &amp;quot;I think [Early Access] is going to be a new, exciting opportunity of developing new ideas and getting the community to drive some of the content we&amp;#039;re making,&amp;quot; Wood explained. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve kept [the game] quite light for the moment \u2013 there&amp;#039;s going to be a small amount of levels to start with \u2013 and based on the feedback we get we&amp;#039;ll add new levels, maybe new abilities, new in-game items. There&amp;#039;s a whole host of ways.&amp;quot; While Flockers will evolve after its initial Early Access release, in its current form it&amp;#039;s most best described as a new, darker version of Lemmings - which is as great as it sounds. Flockers will be available on PC through Steam Early Access this spring. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/previews/feature/a560893/flockers-a-first-look-at-team-17s-new-lemmings-style-puzzle-game/>