Chicken Wiggle

Genre: Platformer / Content Creation Tool

Players: 1, Online Content Sharing

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in The Atooi Bundle, along with Bomb Monkey, Mutant Mudds Deluxe, Mutant Mudds Super Challenge, and Xeodrifter.)

Chicken Wiggle is a family-friendly Platformer released on Nintendo 3DS in 2017, with a remastered version due for release on Nintendo Switch in 2023 under the name Hatch Tales. In this game, players take the role of a young chick who joins forces with a worm to save their animal friends after they’re kidnapped by a witch. Of course, this is actually only half the story. The other half is that players can create and share their own levels online using a fairly robust level creator toolset.

This game’s presentation is delightful, using bright, colorful 2D pixel art visuals and adorable character designs, with these visuals backed by a catchy synthesized and chiptune soundtrack, with nice tunes like Treetop Tower, Treetop Arper, Tours de Dessert, and Temple Tower. Overall, this game exudes a wonderful old-school charm that makes it really endearing.

The gameplay itself is mostly excellent too. The main mechanic here is that your character can fling out his worm buddy to act as a grappling hook, and the game makes good use of this, with clever level design built around your use of this ability. However, it quickly introduces other elements as well, keeping a good amount of variety throughout the campaign, with some fun secrets hidden in each level as well. Really, my only complaint regarding the gameplay is that your character’s attack is pathetically short-range, though thankfully this doesn’t usually matter as combat really isn’t the point of the game here.

However, I need to talk about the real surprise here, which is the level builder, and not just because it’s good (it is), but because as I write this review in 2023 the online selection of these levels is still available, meaning that even now players have a potentially limitless number of levels to choose from, with various ways of sorting these levels too, including curated levels selected by Atooi, and Atooi’s own levels as well.

While the Nintendo Switch remake of Chicken Wiggle still looms at some nebulous point in the future, the game has evidently been in development hell for so long that it’s anyone’s guess when or if it will ever see release. In the meantime, the Nintendo 3DS version is still as great as it ever was, and well worth a purchase for Platformer fans and anyone looking for another great game with a Mario Maker-style level builder. I do not think you’ll be disappointed.

tl;dr – Chicken Wiggle is a Platformer where players take the role of a small bird using a worm like a grappling hook. The gameplay here is great, the presentation is excellent, and the game’s support for its built-in level builder and online community is outstanding. If you have a Nintendo 3DS, this game is absolutely one you’ll want to consider adding to your collection.

Grade: A-

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