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There’s certainly no shortage of retro-flavored pixel art budget platform games on the market currently, many of which have been published by the always dependable Ratalaika Games, and Chicken Climber is yet another platformer from the Ratalaika coop. We previously reported on the release of Chicken Climber, but since them, we’ve managed to spend a few hours really getting our claws into the game.
What we were expecting to be yet another enjoyable but easy-peasy cheap and cheerful platform game turned out to be something a little different and rather more challenging than that. You see, Chicken Climber diverges from the tried and tested platform game formula in a few ways, most notably in its control scheme. You don’t directly move the titular chicken with the thumbstick, but instead aim the chicken at where you want it to be, a la Puzzle Bobble/Bust A Move, or even a bit like the mobile sensation Angry Birds, you see, the longer you pull back the thumbstick, the further your chicken jumps. While these controls turn out to be intuitive, if taking a few goes to fully acclimatize to, herein lies the challenge, as it’s all too easy to overshoot the platform that you’re aiming yourself at, so caution is a must, and it’s always better to slightly underestimate the power with which you need to chuck your chicken, as Chicken Climber isn’t a particularly forgiving game, so the slightest wrong move will send your bird tumbling back down to the start of the level.
We’d say that Chicken Climber’s title is self-explanatory, as the aim of the game is to get your chicken to the top of each level, but perhaps “Chicken Jumper” would have been an even more appropriate description. Yes, Chicken Climber is that rare thing, a vertical platform game, a la Taito’s all-time classic Rainbow Islands.
Chicken Climber is certainly well-presented, with charming, if simplistic graphics and a catchy soundtrack.
And overall, Chicken Climber is a fun but deceptively challenging 2D platform game, though its trickiness may, sadly, turn out to be its undoing, as while the game is that bit too unforgiving for novices, it could be argued that it’s also on the simple side for platform game aficionados, making the game somewhat appropriately fall between two stools: too hardcore for the casuals, and too basic for the hardcore! But we hope that Chicken Climber finds its audience as it certainly deserves to, so, if you’re looking for a cheap and cheerful way to pass the time, but you’re not afraid of a bit of a challenge, then Chicken Climber will give you a “clucking” good time, because there’s a lot of finger lickin’ fun to be had with it! Chicken Climber was developed by Burst Games and published by Ratalaika Games, who released Chicken Climber on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4&5, and Xbox (version reviewed) on May 22, 2026.
