About Chickens
Chickens is a game that gives players a chance to solve problems in a new way. It presents bizarre problems that require bizarre solutions.
The chickens must negotiate their way through a complicated spaghetti junction of pipes in order to reach the end of the game. Not only do they have to deal with the threat of the evil ducks, but the layout of the pipes also poses a puzzle. The game is divided up into levels, which are subsets of the pipe system. Each level consists of a series of pipes with obstacles, a certain number of chickens at the start, a target (number of chickens that have to reach the exit), and a time limit. The player must solve a problem by sending the target number of chickens to the end of the level within the time limit in order to be allowed access to the next level.
A chicken will die if it encounters a duck and attempts to fight it (and so will the duck it's fighting), or come across a bomb or a dead end. However, they can reproduce by laying eggs, and sending the eggs to the incubators to hatch. To make things difficult, the chickens' eggs come in four different colours (green, red, blue and yellow), and must be guided through the same system of pipes to the correct incubator for that colour in order to hatch. The Ducks can lay eggs too, and while there are ducks' eggs in the incubators, any chickens' egg trying to enter will be destroyed.
The junctions consist of ordinary pipes, interchanges, command blocks, and other obstacles. The main control the player has over the game is the ability to switch the paths of some of the pipe interchanges by moving the cursor over the interchange and pressing a button. The player can also release eggs that are being delayed.
Some of the interchanges have a red pipe running underneath them. If an object passes through this red pipe, the state of the junction changes to it's changed state and does not change back until the red pipe is empty again. This makes it possible to construct things like logic-gates out of pipes 'powered' by a stream of ducks' eggs. These can be combined to create computational logic circuits.
The game comes with a construction-set (level-editor) so you can create your own levels.
Chickens Screenshots
The small thumbnails link to a larger image.
Chickens Downloads
Chickens 0.2.0.2 for DOS
To use this from a pure-DOS environment, a mouse-driver must be installed to be able to use the mouse.
Chickens 0.2.0.2 for Windows
The windows version is for Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP . For older versions of Windows such as 3.1, the DOS version should be used instead.
Chickens 0.2.0.2 for MacOS X(experimental)
This is an experimental build. Currently, there are issues with the mouse leaving glitches on the screen. Moving the mouse off the screen-edge might clear them.
Chickens 0.2.0.2 for Linux(x86 32-bit binary)
This currently only works if the executable ('chickens') is started from the console.
Note: If you don't know which version to download, you probably want the Windows version
Installation:
Un-zip the zip-file you downloaded into an empty directory of your choice using a Zip program such as WinZip. The levels (files ending in .pmg) should be in their own directory (most UnZip-programs make sure that directories are preserved). If not, create a directory called "levels" and move the .pmg files (files ending in .pmg) there). If there's a previous version of Chickens installed, un-install it before you install this one.
Documentation:
In the ZIP file, there's a readme.txt file that explains what to do with Chickens. Also to be found is a FAQ (faq.txt).
Credits
- Andrei Ellman
- Concept, Game-design, Programming, Level-design, Project-managment, User-interface, Storyline, Documentation, Game-testing, Additional graphics, DOS port, Windows port
- Dennis Busch:
- Graphics, Animations, Game-testing
- Martijn van Iersel:
- Level-design, Game-testing, Feedback
- Nils Fagerburg:
- Level-design
- Michael Faerber:
- Game-testing, Preparation for Linux port
- Frank Drebin:
- Linux port
- Otto Halmén:
- MacOS X port
Feedback: