Super Chicken Jumper [Xbox]
Sewer Cat’s Super Chicken Jumper is somewhere between a runner and a platformer, with you taking on the titular role of Chicken. You’ll continuously run to the right in each level (up until you eventually encounter boss levels); jump over tree stumps, fish and low flying birds, with hazards changing as you progress through the randomly generated levels. Once you have a weapon you can take enemies out, making things a little easier - though you are still sadly at the mercy of the random generation, often ending up with virtually impossible sections that will kill you over and over again. This makes it feel very frustrating, as there’s no way to really tell in advance if a level is definitely going to be possible due to poorly implemented hazards.
There are six worlds for you to work your way through, each with their own unique look and companion that will guide you. The pixel art style and gorgeous colour scheme work really well together, and the locations are simple but nicely designed, with a very slight horizontal panning effect for the backgrounds, and simple foreground layouts (often mostly silhouetted in black or white) to create a decent depth of field. Enemies are varied, with the small enemies within levels ranging from fish to frogs and birds; but the bosses have far more creative - and often downright creepy - designs that look fantastic. The soundtrack is filled with high-energy dance-y beats and whilst the small cutscenes between characters don’t have voice acting for their dialogue, there’s the occasional little mention of Super Chicken Jumper said in a variety of ways during transitions, giving it a very old-school arcade feel.
Playing through the levels can feel unfair at times; as mentioned before, the randomly generated levels cause an unfortunate amount of unnecessary deaths. Even once you learn to accept this - knowing that restarting levels a few times is pretty much guaranteed - it still feels unfair, until all of a sudden you get a decent run and you can get through it with relative ease. Picking skins and weapons is a lesson in trial and error, with some skins offering advantages such as a jet pack that lets you fly in short bursts, or a pair of running shoes to increase your movement speed. The weapons available to you range from a little stabby knife, to a powerful Muramasa sword or gigantic hammer, which you’ll have to test out each of to find what ones works best for you. As well as these, you’ve got pickups that you can find within levels to give you a temporary boost, such as a nuke to wipe out all enemies currently on-screen, or mushrooms that can either make you giant - or poison you.
Challenges - whilst difficult - offer a fun alternate gameplay option, due to the levels having a defined layout that you can learn and perfect as you try, try and try again. Some require you to very precisely navigate through tight spaces between platforms, dodging tree stumps and the like as you go, but having the luxury of redoing the same thing over and over allows you to improve your timing, making success more of a possibility with each attempt. Each of these is a standalone option, so you can always complete one and then go back to the story if you want - since the Challenges don’t offer any additional story progression or cutscenes.
Having unlockable items and weaponry gives you a little reward for perservering through the levels - and often leads to later levels feeling a tad easier to deal with. The unlock criteria for everything seems to just be completing the relevant levels, so there’s nothing that ends up being really difficult to get or impossible to find, though I would have liked a little variety in how to gain these items. Each item and weapon has alternate skins that you can switch to, as well as different skins for your character too.
As well as the Story and Challenge modes available in the main menu, you’ve also got access to an Endless option if you’re looking to increase the difficulty further. You can also rewatch any of the cutscenes if you so choose. It’s a surprisingly funny title, filled with little bits of humour such as showing a lewd drawing rather than a sketch of the enemy, then an olive instead of a photo of your companion Olivia - it’s a little bit cheesy at times, but it adds a fun, lighthearted layer to the game. Priced at £4.19 on Xbox, Super Chicken Jumper is very much a cheap and cheerful title, offering a decent amount of gameplay, a two-player option to play with a friend, and a steady level of challenge.
In the end, we decided to give Super Chicken Jumper the Collecting Asylum rating of 7.5/10.
Are you interested in Super Chicken Jumper? What do you think of it?
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- V x
Thank you to EastAsiaSoft for the Super Chicken Jumper Xbox review code!
