Fat Chicken (Hands-On) (PC) Preview

The first point worth mentioning about Fat Chicken is that it is a reverse tower defence game. This means that instead of building towers to defeat the "monsters" on their road to the goal, the mission is to ensure they reach the goal. This, with the added need for the animals to get beefy, creates a fun mechanic that makes the gameplay feel multidimensional.

The gameplay is composed of making the animals survive the long walk to the slaughterhouse where they will be turned into meat by feeding them and giving them water, but also later on making sure they do not get sick or abducted by aliens. At the same time, as much growth hormone as possible must be given to ensure that they grow really big and fat to get more money and meet the meat quota for each stage.

Each stage, besides the meat quota, offers another challenge to fulfil to get the maximum star achievements. This challenge changes from stage to stage, but usually involves building fewer towers or ensuring that most animals survive. These add extra levels of depth to the planning of building towers, which is a welcomed addition to the overall challenge.

However, the gameplay has one big flaw, and that is the balance of the difficulty level. While Fat Chicken gets more and more complex throughout the game, so does it get easier and easier if focusing on getting three stars. This is due to the game seemingly not being balanced around getting stars and buying upgrades, which is problematic as those who can get three stars on the earlier levels do not need the game to be any easier than it already is. Using stars to get advantages when Fat Chicken does not seem balanced around doing so is problematic, as it trivialises the game for people that already find it easy, while making it harder for newcomers to the genre.

The story and message behind this game is a good one, with a clear agenda that succeeds in being informative and avoids feeling forced down the throat, which is the case with other games with obvious political messages like the PETA games. This is refreshing for the environment movement, which has had a history of coming out as too enforcing with its messages. This aspect is important to reaching a broader audience and something Fat Chicken has succeeded well with.

Fat Chicken turns into a fun game. The gameplay has several layers, which is a welcomed addition to the genre that usually is too simplistic to draw any real attention. The only issue right now, but that can be changed by release, is that the difficulty level is uneven and might even decrease over time. Aside from this minor flaw, Fat Chicken ends up being a good game.