CHIGUN is a cockfight with guns, pitting a pair of pistol wielding chickens against each other. Peck up bullets throughout the level and ricochet them off blocks to blast your poultry opponent to pieces.
ORIGINS
Chigun started from me designing aliens for another game whilst on holiday in Austria, from which a full game has blossomed with local multiplayer and some ridiculous physics. Upon moving abroad to upstate New York for the summer, my good friend Tyler was thrown into the fray to bring his crazy art style to the table. We worked every night for two and a half months from 6pm till 2am to finish the game before going our separate ways. We've loved every minute of working on the project and hope you enjoy your time playing it.
FEATURES
5 hand crafted levels built using woodwork, leather, collage, stop motion animation, traditional painting, digital art, ceramics, photography and lasercut materials. The above combined with film and art historical references create a combination of levels that add depth to the narrative.
A bizarre narrative grounded in the B-movie era of the 1950’s, the works of science fiction directors, Ed Wood and Ray Harryhausen provided a strong influence on the plot. The players are taken on an adventure through the game accompanied by your “gorgeous” cross-dressing hostess, Tyler.
Local multiplayer madness places chickens in the paths of traps, conveyor belts and each other. Ricocheting bullets off surfaces allow the player to pull off ridiculous kill shots, often bouncing around entire sections of the level to find their target.
An original soundtrack combines the themes of each level with Breakbeat, Drum and Bass, Reggae, and oriental music.
So after a day or so of utter chaos (due to the full time job and launching a video game), I've finally had the time to sit down and put together another article! This one features each of the different levels in the game with a short eggserpt (tee hee) and a video of gameplay to accompany.
Pow Chow requires players to devour as many yellow seeds that they can shove down their gullets in the time limit. The twist? The other player can shoot them to send seeds (and giblets) flying. Whoever can keep down the most of their dinner when the clock hits zero wins.
Free Range is the level that likely went through the most iterations. For this we took inspiration from a lot of great artists and the methods they used to lead the viewers eye around the image. We started off with a clogged, over saturated piece and through excessive iteration we nailed the visual style we were looking for. Check out the devlog for the full documentation of this process.
Abpluction is one of the levels that featured the most practical props - the entire background of this level was sculpted from clay and riddled with bolts, feathers and cogs to give the appearance of a metal armour. The softness of the clay gave a more natural look when ripped open for the hull breach.
Eggsperiment originally was one of the hardest levels to play - at the base of the level the circular saws you can see in Outbeak whirred, and one foul move by a fowl could result in immediate conveyor belt death. After we hacked the blades out and looped the bottom hole to the top, the level came into it's own.
Outbeak was the first level to be created and ironically the last to be updated out of the levels. Tyler really went to town on this level with a plethora of horrifically mutated illustrations that glide and scuttle around the level. The spinning monsters in the background actually only happened due to the positions that Tyler drew the monsters on the paper (in a circular shape following the other's tail).
Yolkyo was by far the hardest to finish. We spent 3 weeks finishing this level, as with it being the finale level there is 5 separate stages to it's structure. We're not giving much away for this level, as we want players to experience this level with fresh eyes. This level by far features the most variety in medium.
For promotional purposes, we did a poster based tutorial for CHIGUN explained of course by no other than horrifically mutated chickens:
A short article introducing our game, CHIGUN. Includes the origins of the project, GIFS, a live action trailer, features of the project and links to stuff...
Demo for CHIGUN allowing players to eggsplore EGGSPERIMENT, a science facility filled with cages and conveyor belts. Enjoy!