Hungry Chicks HD
Score: 80% ESRB: 4+ Publisher: Chillingo Developer: KadaMedia Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Puzzle
Graphics & Sound: Hungry Chicks HD is a physics-based puzzle game, that when first hearing about it might sound like another trajectory-based Angry Birds clone, but right from the start, it's obvious that isn't the case. Hungry Chicks is divided into four locations, Birdyland Forest, Chirpy Desert, Tweety Island and Urban Jungle (added in of Version 1.1). and each one offers a different background for its 12 levels. In the foreground are your parent bird(s), the nest of chicks, the worms to feed them and the collection of obstacles scattered across each level to make it hard to feed all of your chicks and beat the level. The four locations have a different background tune accompanying them. Birdyland Forest has a folksy sound to it that seems to use a lot of flutes, while the Tweety Island has a predictably island sound to it. Urban Jungle has a percussion-heavy tune with the occasional monkey sounds. As for the second world, Chirpy Desert, where I would have suspected something with a western theme, Hungry Chicks decides to go for a more Middle Eastern sound.
Gameplay: Hungry Chicks HD has a pretty basic concept, which is great because the simplicity of the gameplay makes for some really challenging puzzles towards the end of the game. You have indirect control over a parent bird. You tap around them in order to push them in a direction. Your goal is to collect the three worms placed around the level and bring them to your nest in order to feed the three hungry chicks. Each chick fed nets you a star for the level. The game finds a few ways to make this difficult for you. Not only does it introduce a steady arrangement of spikes, blocks, electrical nodes and other obstacles to make navigation between the worms and your destination tough. It also throws in a couple of other birds to make things more interesting. Most of the time, the game isn't as simple as getting one parent bird to its nest with all three worms. In fact, most of the game has you manipulating two birds, one yellow and one purple, and you have to bring the correct number of worms to the nest with the correct number of birds. You never have to deal with more than three chicks and worms, but there are quite a few times when you have to decide exactly how you want to proceed in order to get two worms to one nest and one to the other. Later in the game, Hungry Chicks HD introduces a third bird that will grab any worms that it happens to cross. In order to get them from this brown and spiky creature, you have to bump it before going to the nest. This added bird can be a pest at times, but it does add an interesting dynamic to some of the game's later levels.
Difficulty: The first two locations in Hungry Chicks HD were pretty much a breeze for me. I never got less than the full three stars on a level and while I had to repeat quite a few of them, I never felt like it was because the level was particularly challenging or required master timing; it was typically just a mis-tap on my part. The game gets quite a bit tougher after that though. These levels are designed to be a bit more convoluted and more times than not, they require some pretty good timing and a solid understanding of where your parent bird(s) will go when you tap them. As it is, I've been stuck on one level for days now, and it's the last one of the third world. Thankfully, I had earned enough stars prior to that in order to move on to the fourth world. This particular level requires some damned good mid-air timing in order to switch which side of the screen each parent bird is on, and there are some rotating spikes blocking the way that make for a very small and precise window in order to perform the maneuver.
Game Mechanics: Hungry Chicks HD is all about fine-tuning your control over the birds. While the game records how many taps you perform in a level, this doesn't have any bearing on your rank. Again, that's all based on how many of the three chicks you feed. This does give the game some replayability as you might want to go back and beat the game with fewer taps, but I found that to be a rare feeling, at least for me. Since there isn't really a penalty for the number of taps you perform, having to tap all around your birds in order to keep them in various narrow passageways requires a good bit of practice, but the game seems to do a good job of making sure you've developed the necessary skills before throwing anything like that at you. I enjoyed Hungry Chicks HD a lot. The only real downfall to the game is that there aren't a lot of levels. Each of the four worlds has 12 levels, and most of them are easy enough to get full stars on them the first round. As a result, I was able to plow through a majority of the game in 45 minutes or so, spread across a few play sessions, of course. While I still have that final level in the third world to beat, after that, I'm not sure if there is a reason to keep the game on my iPad. While reviewing Hungry Chicks HD, an update was released that added the Urban Jungle world to the game, so hopefully there will be regular updates with more interesting levels.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Related Links: Hungry Chicks HD | iTunes Page
Blobster HD One Man Army