Cluckles’ Adventure came to my attention when I used to
watch the Co-Optional Podcast with TotalBiscuit, Jesse Cox, Dodger and their
guests. This game appeared in the releases section where they did a quick
run-down of the games that were scheduled for launch; Cluckles came up in one
of those and I found the premise fascinating.
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| Just to reiterate: A chicken with a sword. |
Cluckles’ Adventure is a delightful little game about a
chicken with a sword, who has to travel around 108 levels in three different
environments saving the captured chicks and killing the minions. Cluckles can
jump, double jump, slide down walls and do a kind of dash attack, and that’s
basically it. You can only take one hit before you die and have to start the
level again, although you can pick up armour and a shield later on to allow you
to take more hits. These are the tools you have to complete your main
objective, which is to get through the levels. This allows you to proceed, but
to truly beat a level you have to collect all the chicks as well.
As a game, Cluckles is pretty basic – but therein lies its
charm. The level design is for the most part on point – entertaining enough paths
to the level exit, often full of secret areas that reward exploration, and
rarely more than a minute or two long so having to return to the start of the
level when you die is not a major issue. Your move set might seem rather
limited for a game released in 2017, but “how do I get past this bit?” becomes
a very different question when the answer lies in one of the few options
available to you right from the start. I’ve found that most games that don’t
aim for realism in their art style age pretty well, and the graphics in
Cluckles are pixel art, designed to resemble an old 8-bit game. This is
deliberately designed to replicate an art style that didn’t age well, but
Cluckles is a fine example of it’s use, and will certainly look no worse in
five years! The sound has the old-style chip-tune bloops and whistles as well,
and while the sound track isn’t particularly memorable, it does the job.
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| Presumably this screenshot is from the mobile port... |
The game is a joy to play. The controls are tight and
responsive, (I used the Steam controller for my play through because I didn’t
want to brutalise my laptop keys with a platform game!) it’s genuinely
challenging in places, and the levels are a lot of fun to beat. It’s simple
enough that almost anybody can pick it up and have a go, and there are no
adult-level themes that would restrict its audience. It’s probably the best
game I own for being able to pick it up and have a bit of a play: There’s no
contrived game system to learn, no levelling up or extra abilities, no
incompetently-coded difficulty spikes, no overly elaborate plot, no belligerent
multiplayer communities. It’s just you, a chicken and a sword, for however long
you want to play it – and you’ll have a great time doing it.
Cluckles falters only slightly in the somewhat anticlimactic
end game. Apart from the fact that the last few levels are slightly longer,
there isn’t much differentiation between what you’re doing at the start of the
game and what you’re doing at the end. This isn’t much of an issue; if anything
it adds to the game’s pick-up-and-play mentality as you can easily come back to
it after months and be none the worse for it. But there are no boss battles to
speak of, no extra challenge apart from what the level presents, and there’s
very little in-game reward for beating the game. None of this detracts from
what is overall a very well-designed game – but people who are fans of the
old-school platformers that it’s clearly trying to replicate may be expecting a
little bit more.
Cluckles’ Adventure manages to present the core experience
of video games without augmenting it. It throws out the bathwater, keeps the
baby, and while not everybody will see it through to the end, it’s worth a look
– you’ll enjoy whatever time you put in to it.
Final Score: 4/5.
Great game.
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