Party games are tough to get right sometimes. There has to be a good balance of fun gameplay, charm, and some chaos thrown in there as well to really get people’s attention, and even then, it’s not likely to be for everyone. With Chicken Chicken, Sobaka Studio, the makers of Kiborg, have stepped out and tried something very different for them. In many ways, I can respect that, but it doesn’t mean that what they have come up with is really that good.
The version of Chicken Chicken I played really seemed to be an early build of the game, so it might be better by release, but that doesn’t mean I can overlook the experience that I had. These “minigames” are all very poorly set up, showing symptoms of a game not ready to be released at its best or very poorly designed at its worst.
Clucked Up Minigames
There are three minigames in the Chicken Chicken demo. There are no names in-game for them, so I’ll just be referring to them as Climb, Race, and Drag. None of them are that great.
Climb
In the climbing game, things are pretty simple: whoever gets to the top first wins. As a big platformer fan, I was pretty excited to give this a try, but it is really hard to enjoy a game about climbing if the climbing mechanics don’t work.
If you are next to a flat wall, you can hold the right mouse button to expend some stamina to go upwards, but the problem is there are many times your chicken just can’t get over the edge at the top, so you are sent falling back down. Combine that with the constant barrage of bombs being shot out of cannons at you and you have what was easily the most aggravating mini-game of the three. Because there is no time limit here, you could be stuck endlessly being blasted off the tower for hours. Our game finally ended after over 20 minutes, which really takes the “mini” out of minigame.
Race
The racing game was my favorite of the three I played, but it still had its issues. All players start at the bottom of a mountain and must drive cars up a track while collecting bags of chicken feed and deliver them to the top. Controlling the cars is done by standing on a control pad, which is very odd, but it does add a little bit of that wacky chaos you expect from a minigame.
I had one interesting moment where another player tried stealing my car, but doing the peck attack has no effect on other players, so we were just endlessly jostling for control of the car with no way of ending the conflict until one of us relented.
While this game did have a timer, once you reach the end of the course, the match doesn’t end. Your car disappears, and you get your score, and you are forced to run all the way back to the beginning and do it again before time runs out. There are trampolines to send you back large stretches of the course, but it was aggravating enough that two of our players just gave up at that point and waited for the time to run out rather than deal with the headache.
Drag
The dragging minigame was easily the one that felt the most disjointed. You are loaded into a dark world, with a large light ring that has flies that appear inside. Your mission is to work alongside your teammate to pull a chicken to some flies, and whichever team has the most flies eaten wins. If you step into some green water, your rope disconnects from the chicken, and you need to reconnect before you can earn more points.
Up to this point, your ears are likely to have been bleeding from the constant mix of chicken clucking music, but this one game out of nowhere is completely silent. A bit odd, but it was honestly welcomed by us over the annoying music selection before.
Final Thoughts
Our time with the Chicken Chicken demo left us looking forward to the end of the session. There will be more games added to the mix by release, but what is here now just did not inspire much confidence at all in a product that wants to be something you bring your friends to. Chicken Chicken doesn’t feel good to play, it’s annoying to listen to, and overall, just not fun enough to be worthy of your friend group’s time.
