It’s a joy to experience the insanity of others in physical form. Where it could be boring, the introduction of other players makes the machine feel fresh, even if one player recycles the same design every game, the end result can and will become entirely different. Split between multiple players all building up hazards for different approaches or play styles, the resulting deluge of death manages to undercut any sense of boring, mechanical necessity of overcoming your own hand-designed traps. However, seeing how two or three unrelated traps can magically come together in unintended ways creates a work of sadistic art, putting an impossible spin on something so otherwise conquerable. None of the traps are, by themselves, supremely deadly. Each trap, taken on their own, is actually incredibly easy to overcome. While the traps are building up and platforming quickly goes from strategic platforming to improvisational panic, the game shines.
It means that this game could be set up on a laptop, plopped in the middle of a crowded convention hall, student union, or dorm room, and everyone around the screen will have figured the whole thing out before anyone has two points.
From a glance, it’s pretty obvious to figure out what a trap does from the selection screen, the grid helps keep the location of every placement clear and uncluttered, and the two-button platforming is intuitive within the first few seconds of play. The game always stays simple enough to be understood. Likewise, players are competing to perform feats the other cannot, similar to the basketball game, Horse, where the first player to five points wins. Since all players have to go through the same platforming stage, every hazard added is like playing Chicken with death, hoping to barely squeak by while the opponent does not. The name Ultimate Chicken Horse actually describes the central concept for the game very well, broken down. The hazardous ones are more creative: arcing cannons, linear arrows, stationary spike balls, spinning buzzsaws, and trajectory-altering black holes. Most of the nonthreatening options are fairly simple at a glance: stable platforms, moving platforms, trampolines, rotating platforms, unstable platforms, and opening and closing doors. There are about 30 placeable items, split pretty evenly between threatening and nonthreatening options. Anyone who’s at least somewhat familiar with 2D platformers can usually develop an intuitive sense of scale by the end of their first game, and can develop suitably devious traps and hazards by the end of their second. The entire stage is broken up into 5×5 grids, which helps give a sense of scale when trying to figure out how far to make certain platforms to make jumps challenging, or whether or not things like buzzsaws or barbed wire hurdles would make a jump impossible. The construction system between platforming rounds is surprisingly robust.
Additional bonuses are granted for making comebacks, collecting player-placed coins while navigating the deadly machinery, and placing a trap that killed another player. Once every play has had a turn adding new hazards, every player takes a shot at getting to the goal with the new, dangerous Rube Goldberg machine connecting the start and end points.Įach player that successfully arrives at the goal gains one point, first player to five points wins. The additions can be anything from safe landing spaces to spinning sawblades. What stands between them is likewise up to them, as before each round of platforming, players make additions or subtractions to the stage between challenging the stage. Players pick their animals, and all begin on a map with a set beginning and end point, and must successfully run and jump to reach the end. So it goes in Ultimate Chicken Horse, a two to four player competitive platformer game. Does the gap call for a platform, or maybe a springboard? There’s a lot of hope in the empty space between start and goal, and in the same breath, there’s also a lot of opportunity for danger and chaos.
ULTIMATE CHICKEN HORSE MERCH FULL
It begins with an empty canvas, full of opportunity and consideration. Developed and published by Clever Endeavour Games.
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