Hungry Chicks Review

In Hungry Chicks, players must catch worms to feed their nest full of baby chicks. The task sounds simple enough, but the game's developer, Clickgamer.com, has made a considerable effort to stretch the concept into a full-fledged iPhone title. And it's done a surprisingly good job at it.

At first glance, I didn't expect much from Hungry Chicks. But as the old saying goes, looks can be deceiving – and, also, one should never judge a book by its cover.

Players tap the screen to fly the mother bird around tree branches, spikes and other obstacles. The goal is to collect all of the worms on screen and then fly back to the nest full of baby chicks. Depending on how many baby chicks wait for the mother bird in her nest, players must collect that number of worms. Later in the game, things become complicated by an added layer of depth: players will have to collect worms for different colored mother birds and different colored nests. For example, in one stage they might have to collect 3 worms for the purple nest and 2 for the orange nest. Sounds easy enough, but in practice, it's actually quite challenging. For instance, if gamers collect too many worms with the purple bird, they won't have enough worms left over for the other colored nests.

The game's controls are probably not what readers would expect, but they work quite well. To navigate the mother bird, players tap to the side of her and she will fly in the opposite direction. She quickly begins to descend, though, and gamers must tap again to send her flying – or gliding, really – in whatever direction they want. Hungry Chicks quickly turns into a game of rapidly tapping the screen to keep the mother bird afloat and collecting worms, and it's a game that requires quick thinking and precision, otherwise it's Game Over rather quickly. As the game progresses, for example, it introduces obstacles, such as electric gates, that will fry gamers upon contact.

All together, there are 36 levels to experience, spread out across three different themed worlds: Forest, Desert and Tropical Island.

Hungry Chicks is a surprisingly fun and challenging title for iOS. It's something that players can pick up and play even if they have only a few minutes, or something they can find themselves getting sucked into, continuing to play one level after the other. For 99 cents, gamers can't go wrong with this one.

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