Indie Spotlight – Ultimate Chicken Horse leaps onto mobile with its beloved quirky platforming experience

Noodlecake is gearing up to launch the indie hit, Ultimate Chicken House, to Android and iOS later this year. In this multiplayer party platformer, you and your friends can build the levels as you play, whether together or online, and experiment with various platforms.

Originally released in 2016 by developers Clever Endeavour Games, this well-crafted title is finally making its way to mobile, promising the same creative and exciting experience.

Game Overview

Ultimate Chicken Horse, from Clever Endeavour Games, is a racing party platformer game that invites you and your friends to race as adorable animals, like a chicken, horse, and more. However, there is an exciting twist, as you can build as you play, adding traps, obstacles, and more to mess with your rivals.

You can either play online or locally, with up to four players, and explore the game’s unique blend of strategic level-building and twitch control platforming. Moreover, with a huge collection of blocks, you can even create endless levels for more fun.

With its charming, cartoony art style, wide variety of animal characters, custom levels, customizable rules and game modes, a shared controller mode, challenge levels, and more, Ultimate Chicken Horse delivers a well-rounded, dynamic, and exciting gameplay experience for modern gamers.

Why you should play Ultimate Chicken Horse

• A hit indie party platformer with very positive reviews across major platforms.
• Vibrant, cartoony visuals with a wonderful cast of quirky animal characters.
• Supports up to 4 players for online or local matches, and 17 unique levels with different features.
• A chaotic yet exciting gameplay experience with challenge levels, traps, hazards, and more.

From concept to creation: Developer Insights

In a conversation with GamingonPhone, Richard Atlas, one of the three co-founders of Clever Endeavour Games, including Alex Attar and Kyler Kelly, shared valuable details about Ultimate Chicken Horse. He opened up about the game’s early development, inspiration, challenges, and more.

While talking about how the studio started, Mr. Richard explained that before Ultimate Chicken Horse became an indie hit, it started as a game jam in Montreal, when he was planning on starting a gaming studio. Mr. Richard revealed that Clever Endeavour began in late 2014.

From game jam experiment to studio foundation and game’s debut

He said that he had “known Alex (another founder) for a long time, and met Kyler (the last founder) at local developer meetups.” To test their chemistry and see if they could “work well under pressure,” the trio started a quick one-day jam, followed by a weekend jam.

According to him, they only “decided we could spend some more time working on it” after showing off an early version of the game at a meetup and getting positive feedback from the people. As the game continued, they realized it had potential. He noted that’s when “we formed the studio around it.“

Mr. Richard also mentioned that the team remained just the three of them until launch. It wasn’t until Ultimate Chicken Horse earned just enough money for them “to afford hiring someone else” that they “expanded the team.” The team gradually grew from there.

A chance encounter sparked the upcoming mobile version

I was curious to know what made them bring the game to the mobile platform now, and he explained that the idea to develop a mobile version resurfaced during a chance meeting at a “games event in our hometown Montreal called MIGS (Montreal International Games Summit).”

Mr. Richard recounted how he ran into “Ryan from Noodlecake, the team who did the port and publishing of the game to mobile.” He revealed that they had known each other for a long time before he got into the industry and that he “was looking for some advice about how to break in.“

Hearing that Noodlecake had recently ported a console game to mobile made him remember, “It had been years since we thought about bringing the game over.” While the idea came up before, Mr. Richard explained, “We had discussed it internally many times, of course,” but they didn’t go for it as they “didn’t have the development experience nor the experience in monetization design.“

He also explained one more reason for how most games that made money during that time were free-to-play, and they “didn’t feel capable of trying to stand out in an extremely crowded F2P space on mobile.“

After the talk, they realized, “there was huge potential and fairly low risk, and the monetization models had varied enough for it to feel reasonable to try to do.”

Why the mobile release is worth the wait

While at it, I also asked about what fans can look forward to, and according to Mr. Richard, “The main thing to be excited about for this version is simply how portable and how approachable it is for all players.”

He also adds, “People who may never have played because the feeling of holding an Xbox controller in their hand scares them,” now they will get to experience this title.

And because of the intuitive controls, he believes it will “lend well to building levels and running through challenge courses, which means there’s big potential for solo play as well.”

The creative process behind the game’s origin

“We made Ultimate Chicken Horse for a game jam which had three themes: Modular, Phrase, and The Ultimate _ ” Mr. Richard explained. The team’s original idea was something like Scribblenauts, except where “the letters themselves morphed into objects,” but that shifted quickly once they built a level.

“There was some idea of making a dungeon crawler where you create the dungeon and enemies, and the AI is the hero,” he recalled, but they soon realized that was too much for a small jam. Instead, they decided to control characters themselves, and they made it 2D.

Interestingly, the controls took inspiration from Super Meat Boy, a tough platformer that both Alex and Richard played a lot, which is a personal favorite of mine too, although a bit frustrating at times. Eventually, they dropped the idea of “worlds becoming platforms in favor of placing them outright,” he said.

As for the theme, “phrase”, it did inspire the letters, “but we ended up dropping that,” Mr. Richard noted. “We had drawn up these cute chicken and horse characters,” he revealed, while talking about how the Ultimate Chicken Horse name was decided.

He also shared an early scoring system concept: “You received a letter if you failed, in the way that people play H-O-R-S-E in basketball or S-K-A-T-E with skateboarding.” In his words, it was meant to be the ultimate game of horse and chickens, “where people tend to do stupid and dangerous things until someone gets hurt.“

Gameplay that’s wacky, fun, and surprising at the same time

Mr. Richard admitted, “It can be overwhelming to see the number of blocks that exist in the game today for a first-time player.” Still, as a party game, it is more interesting to players, especially new ones, “to try to figure out what the new block does rather than try to be super strategic and win,” he said.

“There’s no huge commitment to choosing or placing one block in one specific place,” he explained, thanks to the game’s rounds of placement. He also pointed out how the way block interacts can spark curiosity among players, like “the arrow going into the cannon and being shot out at an angle.“

As for the game modifiers, Mr. Richard noted, “a lot of people don’t know they exist.” He believes that partly because the game started as a small game and gradually expanded. “At launch, there was no level editor, no challenge mode, no modifiers,” he revealed.

So it was challenging to reveal them properly to players when those features were added. The team is also aware that some of these features are not known to veteran players. He assured, “We have some ideas about how to improve the user experience to show players more of what the game offers.“

How the mobile release can expand the community to new levels

As we wrapped up our conversation, the focus of our topic shifted to how the upcoming mobile launch could grow the Ultimate Chicken Horse community.

Mr. Richard sees a lot of potential in the mobile market and believes it could introduce the game to a new audience, “who would never have played the game on PC or console.” Whether it’s due to limited hardware or because their friends also play on mobile only, this version will make it more accessible.

He also pointed out that some existing fans may choose mobile just to bring their friends along, “who only play mobile games.” Mr. Richard is optimistic about the future, stating, “I’m excited to see new people coming into the Discord and the conversation around the game through our social media channels.“

Final Verdict from the Editor

With pre-registration now open, I am really excited about Ultimate Chicken Horse, shaping up to be a very enjoyable party platformer, designed for up to four players. The best part is its blend of strategic-level building with fast-paced platforming.

After getting my hands on its early access, I can say that it’s exciting. Whether you opt to play online or locally with your friends, the game makes it easy for you to hop in. With its quirky characters, cartoony visuals, various levels, and option to create and share custom stages, it’s a must-try title.

If you want to experience this racing party platformer with your friends, then you can pre-register for it via your respective Google Play Store or App Store. It is slated to launch in Q2 of 2025. Stay tuned for more updates!

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