Everyone recalls the halcyon days when video games allowed for same couch cooperative play. Few and far between are the titles that allow you to do such a thing these days, but even fewer are ones that are fun and also allow you to play in the same house as your friends. Chickenoidz Super Party is one of those rare games that actually does offer local co-op with your friends, and you can even use CPUs to fill in the gaps when you don’t have enough players. So, the big question would be: Is Chickenoidz Super Party the (chicken) breast use of your hard-earned $10? Let’s find out.
One of the first things you’ll see when you boot up Chickenoidz Super Party, right after the Unity logo with an extremely brawny chicken, are the start game and options selections. The options menu only consists of language settings so you won’t spend much time there, but when you select to start, you’ll see that there’s only one game mode with two others labeled as coming soon. The only mode available, Last Chick Standing, allows for one to four players to engage in some fowl play (CPUs are also available to play against, as well). There’s seven characters for each player to choose from, such as a standard girl and boy chick, a witch and a samurai chicken, but I prefer to play as the robo-chicken, because he’s clearly a cutlet above the rest.
After selecting characters, you can choose how many rounds you want to play and Chickenoidz Super Party will randomly select stages for you to play on from the 32 available. The stages shift from incredibly basic stone platforms to, why is there a giant tentacle in the center of the secret laboratories, but it’s always entertaining to play these kinds of arena action titles with stage hazards. When you first drop onto the field, you won’t have many ways of interacting with your opponents aside from slowly waddling around and dashing at them, but eventually weapons will start dropping from the sky that will allow you to egg-splode your competition.
The controls are simple enough, you have a button for a dash to get out of harm’s way, a button to shoot whatever gun you’ve picked up, and a melee attack button so you can push away opposing poultry with a big boxing glove or an icy hammer that can freeze dry opposing fowl. The weaponry that appears does have some differing controls and learning curves, as the slow disc launcher takes more time to figure out how to use properly than just getting the gatling gun or missile launcher. Scoring a ring-out instantly fries an opposing chicken, so on stages without walls, the water guns with their high pushback can be great ways at eliminating the competition.
Chickenoidz Super Party is very close to a title like Bomberman where you’re dropped into an arena, make use of the items you find, deal with stage hazards (sometimes), and take out your opponents. Some have gimmicks, such as one where the only weapon available to all four players are boxing gloves because the walls are covered in spikes, so you have to make use of the stage hazard in order to claw away at your opponents’ health. The stages designate what weapons are available, and while you tenderize some mothercluckers, you’re sure to find some weapons that come in clutch.
The visuals of Chickenoidz Super Party are serviceable with each chicken having giant googly eyes and wobbly animated features, and there isn’t a greater design cohesiveness across the chickens, the UI, and the level design. The environments look like something out of Bomberman, for the most part, while some stages look medieval, but you’ve got these waddling, googly-eyed chickens sauntering back and forth, hitting each other with gatling guns and other weaponry. The visuals are overtly cartoony and somewhat endearing, as the chickens are cute enough and it’s not difficult to tell what’s going on even when things become more hectic on-screen, but the visuals don’t follow a unifying theme in the slightest.
There is a tutorial that teaches you how to play Chickenoidz Super Party- like the first stage played teaches you the dash button and then forces you to bump your opponents off the stage using nothing but the dash. The weird part, however, is that this tutorial plays every single time you start a new game, largely meaning that the first several stages you play, every single time, will all be the exact same with no variation or changes in rules. You will always play the dash tutorial stage for the first round, the shooting tutorial stage for the second round, and the one where you use a boxing glove to knock your opponents into spiked walls in the third round.
The number of rounds selected determines how many stages Chickenoidz Super Party pre-selects for you to play, so if you only play for 10 rounds, it only chooses 7 stages: that means almost half the stages you get to play on are always the same. It’s just such a strange design choice, which is made even weirder by the fact that you can’t pick which stages you want to play. You can only choose which chicken you want to play as, and how many rounds you’ll be playing, and that’s it.
All that being said, this is currently all there is in Chickenoidz Super Party. You play stage after stage, with the chick winning each round acquiring points, and after a specified number of rounds, that chick is declared the compre-hen-sive winner. Chickenoidz Super Party can be a lot of fun, especially when you get new stages, but there’s not a lot to do after playing a round or two with your friends as there’s no other game modes, and the first three stages are always the same.
Is Chickenoidz Super Party worth $10, given that it’s just some brief arena entertainment that kids might play for an hour or two? The visuals are cute and crispy enough to keep them interested, and if they have siblings, this could be a way for them to enjoy an arena shooter on the Switch for a low price, as there’s competent local multiplayer, but nothing like online multiplayer at all. What you see is entirely what you get with Chickenoidz Super Party, and while there may be a couple game modes coming in the future, as of right now, it is quite barebones without much to do after you play a couple rounds.