Chickenauts
- TheAwakening
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 15 hours ago
Overview
Chickenauts is a roguelite shoot 'em up where aliens have stolen your chickens, and you decide to storm their mothership to bring them down. You will have your own AI-controlled companion that shoots down rogue chickens while you dodge their bullets and shoot back as well. Choosing the right upgrades and using the good potions, all in hopes of reaching the boss healthy. Unfortunately, its gunplay falls short, as there isn’t a lot of content currently.
Gameplay
The difficulty will modify the damage done to your foes and determine how much faster you reach the end, which currently sits at three biomes with their respective bosses. You have two weapons at the start, a ranged pistol or a melee fork. Back at the farm the loadout and the chicken companion can be changed to those unlocked before.
You have to clear the entire floor of chickens before unlocking rewards and proceeding further. All enemies with guns will follow where you move and shoot in that way, while melee ones will close down on you. Some can drop acid pools; others will explode, but the main threat are the ranged ones, as they cover a lot of space. Your chicken companion can be controlled by ordering him to follow an enemy until it’s destroyed, hold a position, or just follow you. There is a limited range where it can attack, however. Special elite enemies (not bosses) will have their own rooms in which you must defeat them on every run.
Upgrading your chicken happens every five rooms, with a pool of weapons, active or passive abilities, and some of those can be of better quality. With a key you can reroll the three choices. Upgrades for the farmer are mostly passive items that increase his stats in certain circumstances, among others. Potions can be activated for a single room, which will buff your damage, freeze enemies, grant you coins, etc. Coins can purchase any of these items in shops, including health or keys. Eggs obtained in the run can be used to increase the farmer's stats back at the farm. If you want to donate your resources, you will be rewarded with unique and powerful upgrades. All you have to do is find the right chicken for coins, keys, or health to give.
Back at the farm between runs, you can increase your stats, change weapons (must be unlocked by playing), change your companion, or activate mutators that will make the game even harder if you want to. Once you are prepared, your objective is to reach the boss room while having full health and good upgrades. Up then it is to reach the third and final boss of the game, but that’s the whole game for the moment. You can change difficulty to determine how much faster you want to beat the game, but there isn’t any reason to play it hard, as it does not increase or decrease rewards, just damage.
Bugs Found
The shopkeeper's title name is being displayed as an error.
Audio & Graphics
Graphics are fine and don’t demand a lot of my PC, so the framerates never dropped. There is barely one track of music in the run and in the farm; nothing special is played during boss fights. Ranged enemies should have an indicator when they’re about to fire; I only found such a thing in melee attacks and elite foes.
Pros & Cons
Pros-
Casual roguelite shoot 'em up, with chickens.
Familiar special guest chickens as companions.
Cons-
Not a lot of content for the time being.
Gets repetitive very early on.
Not much of a roguelite if you can change the difficulty. The game doesn’t feel rewarding.
Rating: 5/10
I knew nothing good would come from those aliens and their flying machines. Now git!
