Okay, my friend Anil from Pune told me about this game. “It’s just a chicken crossing a road,” he says. “Simple,” he says. Anil is a liar. I am now a total of 700 rupees poorer and I see that stupid, wide-eyed chicken when I close my eyes. This isn’t a game; it’s a digital curse wrapped in bad graphics.
Forget fancy visuals. This game looks like a five-year-old drew it after too much mango juice. The chicken itself is a jumble of pixels. Its legs dont move right. The lorries and autorickshaws that want to turn our hero into butter chicken are just colored blocks. But it has this weird charm, you know Like a song you hate but cant get out of your head. The sound is just one single, panicked “BOK!” every time you tap. It will drive you absolutely mad. Its brilliant.
The game’s payout is a total enigma. It claims a high RTP, which means it should give money back. I think the machine that calculates this must be broken. For ten minutes, you get small wins. Drip, drip, drip. Enough to give you hope. Then, a long, dry spell. A desert of no wins. My cousin swears he hit a jackpot after seeing a bus with his birthdate on the number plate. I think he is full of it, but who knows It’s a total gamble. Like betting on which street food stall in Mumbai wont give you Delhi belly.
So how you play this thing You tap. The chicken hops. That’s it. So simple, a baby could do it. Except they couldn’t, because it’s impossible. The timing is a mystery straight from the gods. Sometimes a fast tap works, sometimes you need a slow one. There is no logic. The controls are perfect and also they are completely broken. I told you this game was a curse.
You thought it was over, didn’t you You thought you could read about the cursed chicken game and walk away. Welcome back. Since my last post, that shimmering biryani vision It hasn’t returned. Only the chicken. The chicken is eternal.
Playing this game in real-time is an exercise in pure futility. The first few hops, they feel easy. You feel like a king. “I have mastered the chicken,” you think. Then, the game unleashes its fury. The traffic multiplies. The Ambassador cars are now joined by reckless scooters from Chennai and the occasional, inexplicable cow. Your thumbs. They just stop working. The single “BOK!” sound turns into a chorus of doom. It’s no longer about skill. It’s a beautiful disaster.
You want tips Okay, here are the tips. They are all useless, but here we go. Anil now insists the only way to win is to play while facing North. My cousin in Hyderabad says you must whisper the name of your favorite Tollywood actor before each round. A so-called “professional” (probably Anil in a fake mustache) told me the secret is to tap with the rhythm of an old Kishore Kumar song. The truth is, there is no strategy. The tips is all lies. It’s a fickle god, this game. It gives you money when it feels like it.
Who would create such a monster Not a big company in Bengaluru. I did some snooping. The mastermind is rumored to be one single developer in a small flat in Kochi. His old forgotten blog, it has one post. It talks about wanting to capture the “spiritual anxiety of crossing a busy Indian street.” He hasnt updated it in five years. I think he finally did it, created this perfect nightmare, and has now retired to a quiet life. Or maybe the chicken got him too.