Chicken Scream is a game where you make a chicken run by shouting at your phone

Chicken Scream is an endless “runner” game that tasks you with the most basic of platforming tasks to perform – namely to jump across games and to avoid spikes. And like the vast majority of other such games on Android and iOS, Chicken Scream grants you little control over your character, limiting your movement to walking to the right and jumping. Where the game differs from others, however, is in the way you actually play it – in this case, not by tapping the screen, but by shouting at your phone. Marvelous!

When Nintendo launched the DS over a decade ago, people were concerned by the plethora of microphone gimmicks involved in some games — for example, where you had to blow or scream at the console to make something happen — and rightfully so. It wasn't immersive, or fun, or even remotely appropriate for playing on the go, which is, you know, the main purpose of a portable console, and developers soon learned to avoid such gimmicks.

Chicken Scream, however, takes this idea and runs with it by making a voice control gimmick the core of its gameplay mechanic. It's quite simple, really – to walk forward, talk to your phone gently; to jump, make some noise. It works well enough when you get the hang of it, but this control “scheme” the only thing that makes Chicken Scream unique.

Novel controls notwithstanding, the game is relatively bland, uneventful, and simply not all that fun. Once the screaming gimmick wears off, provided you found it entertaining in the first place, you begin to realize just how basic Chicken Scream is. The game scores you on a per-platform basis, counting each successful jump at the top of the screen, and that's pretty much the only incentive to move forward. Oh yeah, you can also compare your scores on a global ranking that's dominated by people with strained vocal cords.

Okay, okay, we get it, the game was meant to be funny and ridiculous. What we don't get, however, is what scenarios the developers were envisioning for their game to be played in once finished. How someone may play this game in the company of others is completely beyond us, unless they are being "random” and purposefully trying to be annoying. We can't see a lot of people playing it alone either, it's simply tiresome.

What this game is good for, we guess, is let's play videos. Since people already enjoy watching other people play video games and shout their heads off in front of a webcam, Chicken Scream should prove perfect for such scenarios. It could even offer more variety, as you can control your kitchen not only by talking, but also by making all sorts of funny noises. It doesn't matter, you can even scat sing to make it walk and spazz out at every gap to jump.

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