Chicken Rider

Chicken Rider is a 2D side-scrolling platformer and endless runner where players control a knight riding a chicken through a fantasy world. The game features bright, colorful visuals and comedic elements as the chicken-mounted hero navigates levels filled with obstacles and puzzles. Originally a free-to-play mobile game with in-app purchases, it was later ported to multiple platforms including Nintendo Switch, Windows, and Macintosh, where it was criticized for its poorly balanced economy and direct port of its mobile-centric monetization structure.

Chicken Rider: A Fowl Run Through Mobile Porting Purgatory

In the vast and varied annals of video game history, there are titles that define generations, games that push the boundaries of art and technology, and those that become cherished cultural touchstones. And then there is Chicken Rider. Released not with a triumphant crow, but with a confused cluck, this 2018 endless runner stands as a stark monument to the perils of low-effort mobile porting, cultural mistranslation, and a gameplay loop so grind-heavy it feels like a parody of the very free-to-play models it emulates. This is the story of a polar bear, a chicken, and a journey that should never have left the farm.

Development History & Context

Studio Vision and Technological Constraints
Chicken Rider was developed by Polish studio Red Dev Studio S.A. and published by Ultimate Games S.A., a publisher known for a prolific output of budget-tier titles on digital storefronts. The game was built using the Unity engine, a tool that empowers developers of all skill levels but can also facilitate the rapid assembly of underwhelming products.

The game’s origins are transparently rooted in the mobile free-to-play market of the late 2010s. Its DNA is sequenced with the markers of that era: a simple one-touch control scheme designed for smartphones, an economy balanced around enticing microtransactions, and a structure built for short, repetitive play sessions. The vision, as gleaned from the game’s own promotional materials, was seemingly to create a wacky, attention-grabbing endless runner with a bizarre premise to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

The Gaming Landscape of 2018-2019
When Chicken Rider hatched on Android and iOS in July 2018, the mobile gaming landscape was dominated by hyper-optimized titles from giants like King and Supercell. The endless runner genre, once king itself with games like Temple Run and Jetpack Joyride, was still present but required more than a gimmick to succeed. The subsequent ports to PC (Windows, Mac) and, most notably, the Nintendo Switch in May 2019, placed it in an entirely new context. The Switch eShop was becoming a haven for indie gems, but also a dumping ground for low-effort mobile ports. Chicken Rider arrived not as a free-to-play title, but as a paid product, asking players for money upfront while retaining the grinding mechanics of a game that expected to make its revenue post-download. This critical misstep would form the core of its disastrous reception.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

Plot: The Liberation That Nobody Asked For
The narrative of Chicken Rider is a masterpiece of obfuscation. According to the official description, you play as “a young polar bear… fighting for animal freedom.” During a mission to liberate chickens from a farm, he accidentally triggers an alarm and is “forced to flee on the only one vehicle left… the chicken.”

This plot is almost entirely absent from the actual game experience. As noted by critics, the story is relegated to background details, such as a silo branded with “JHC Jin’s Happy Chickens”—a not-so-subtle parody of KFC. The primary antagonist, a man on a flying goblin glider who fires missiles at you, is revealed to be the aforementioned “Jin” from the silo artwork. The player is left to piece together a narrative about a polar bear activist freeing poultry from a fast-food conglomerate, a plot so bizarre it borders on the surreal.

Characters and Dialogue: Lost in Translation
The characters are defined solely by their visual design and gameplay function. The polar bear, occasionally named “Smally” in press materials, is a blank slate onto which players can project a staggering array of poorly conceived cosmetic items. The dialogue is non-existent, replaced by a cacophony of sound effects, most infamously an ear-splitting “Wooooo!” that plays with every jump.

The true “narrative” emerges through the game’s questionable content. The cosmetic shop includes outfits such as a “bag of cocaine,” “Emo’s razor blade,” and pimp attire, all presented with a jarring lack of context or satire. This, combined with poorly translated item names like “Presidents of Asia Hair” and “King’s of Rock ‘N’ Roll Hair,” creates a thematic palette that is less “wacky” and more “culturally insensitive and clumsily assembled.” The attempt at humor falls utterly flat, revealing a profound lack of editorial oversight.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Core Loop: Run, Jump, Grind, Repeat
The gameplay of Chicken Rider is brutally simple. The player controls a chicken-riding polar bear who automatically moves forward. The only input is a jump (and occasionally a double jump), used to avoid obstacles like walls, guards, and missiles. The goal is to run as far as possible, collecting coins and seeds—the latter replenishes a constantly depleting stamina meter.

This is a classic endless runner framework, but it fails in its execution. The controls are imprecise; the jump arc is fixed and cannot be modulated by holding the button, leading to frustrating collisions with obstacles that seem to materialize instantly. Critics universally panned the control sensitivity and the occasional but disruptive frame rate hiccups.

Power-Ups and Progression: A Free-to-Play Ghost in the Machine
The game features power-ups collected during a run:
* Football Helmet: Grants an extra hit point.
* Lawnmower: Clears obstacles directly ahead.
* Skateboard: Provides temporary invincibility and increased speed.
* “Blue Pill” (originally named Viagra in pre-release builds): Allows brief flight.

While these items provide momentary variety, their implementation is shallow. The game’s most damning flaw, however, is its progression system, a clear vestige of its free-to-play origins. Coins earned from runs are meant to be spent on:
1. New Chickens (“Mounts”): 7 different chickens with perks like double jump or dash, priced from 30,000 to 180,000 coins.
2. Cosmetic Outfits: Over 70 items for the bear, priced from 15,000 to 50,000 coins.
3. One-Use Upgrades: For a single run, such as a rocket that bypasses a chunk of level.

The economy is catastrophically unbalanced for a paid game. An average run nets 500-2,000 coins. To purchase the cheapest mount, a player would need to complete a minimum of 15-20 perfect runs. This creates a grind of Sisyphean proportions, a transparent attempt to incentivize microtransactions that were stripped out for the Switch and PC releases, leaving only the frustrating skeleton of the system behind.

World-Building, Art & Sound

Visuals: Cartoon Network Aesthetic, Mobile Resolution
The game’s 2D visual style is its one semi-redeeming quality. The cartoony sprites of the bear and chicken are bright and colorful, with a aesthetic that recalls early 2000s Flash animation. The backgrounds change as you progress, moving from the farm to a “typical American town” (a phrase the developers seemed oddly fascinated with), to Area 51, and finally to space.

However, this charm is undermined by the game’s frantic pace. The scenery whips by too quickly to be appreciated, and the visual chaos often makes it difficult to distinguish collectible coins from deadly obstacles.

Sound Design: An Assault on the Ears
If the visuals are passable, the sound design is where Chicken Rider commits its greatest sins. The music consists of a single, twangy banjo track that plays at a slow tempo in menus and a faster one during gameplay. It is repetitive and grating. The sound effects are worse: every jump triggers that infamous, shrill “Wooooo!” which rapidly devolves from mildly amusing to actively hostile. Multiple reviewers explicitly recommended turning the sound off entirely, a testament to its failure as an audio experience.

Reception & Legacy

Critical Panning and Player Disdain
Chicken Rider was met with universal derision from critics upon its Switch release. It holds a 34% aggregate critic score on MobyGames, based on five reviews:
* Pure Nintendo (65%): Called it enjoyable enough for its price despite a lack of substance.
* Nindie Spotlight (35%): Lambasted it as a “lazy direct port” with a predatory economy.
* Nintendojo (25%): Declared it had “no excuse existing on Switch.”
* Video Chums (20%): Simply called it “clucking awful.”

Player sentiment was even harsher, with a user score of 1.6/5. The consensus was clear: this was a shallow, poorly optimized mobile port that offered nothing of value next to the thousands of superior games available on every platform it inhabited.

Legacy: A Cautionary Tale
The legacy of Chicken Rider is not one of influence or nostalgia, but of caution. It serves as a perfect case study in how not to port a mobile game to a premium platform. Its failure to rebalance its economy, its reliance on outdated and insensitive humor, and its technical shortcomings make it a textbook example of low-effort game development.

It did not inspire a genre or create a franchise. Instead, it became a footnote, a punchline mentioned in discussions about the “shovelware” problem on digital storefronts. It stands as a reminder that a bizarre premise and bright colors are not enough to sustain a game—especially when it is built on a foundation of grinding frustration and auditory torture.

Conclusion

Chicken Rider is a failed experiment in every sense. It is a game trapped between identities: too grind-heavy to be a fun paid experience, too shallow to be a engaging free-to-play time-waster, and too poorly constructed to be a competent runner. Its attempts at humor are cringe-worthy, its gameplay is frustrating, and its sound design is legitimately unpleasant.

While its core concept—a polar bear riding a chicken away from a fast-food magnate—is undeniably memorable, it is the only feather in this game’s cap. For historians and journalists, Chicken Rider is a fascinating artifact, a perfect snapshot of a certain type of low-budget, asset-flip game development that flourished in the late 2010s. For players, however, it is an experience to be avoided at all costs. There are countless better endless runners, on mobile and console alike, that respect your time, your intelligence, and your eardrums. Chicken Rider is a poultry effort in a field of high-flyers, and its place in video game history is firmly cemented as a definitive example of what not to do.