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Blue Chicken (Dungeon Crawler Jam 2025 version)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #46 | 2.565 | 2.565 |
Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
- Genre Fusion: Featuring roguelike elements: every time you play, a new dungeon is assembled by reordering the rooms. There is also permanent failure and you cannot save and rollback.
- Treasure hunting (Unearth, Hidden secrets): You must find the eggs of the blue chicken, which will require you to solve some puzzles in order to get to them. The eggs can be found in special rooms that might appear anywhere during your run (because the order is randomized)
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Cool! Honestly, I found it hard to navigate at times (as if the walls weren't being drawn correctly), but I love the simple but stylish visuals! I've done a paper drawn dungeon crawler myself!
I didn't complete the game, however, I enjoyed the game!
Very cool and unique style in this entry! I like it a lot. I think the simple combat was interesting and engaging too.
But I did have some problems, first and obvious thing was the errors in where walls and such were rendered or not. It unfortunately made it very confusing to figure out how the dungeon layout was.
The way that enemies didn’t show up also if they were on a diagonal also made combat very unforgiving since you could be attacked from a side out of the blue. The combat also was a game of attrition as far as I understood it and that makes such surprises even more problematic than they would have been if there was a health regen or eggs we could eat to gain a bit back.
It’s fine to not have health regen, but I think I would have needed those things fixed and added AD strafing with QE turning to stand a chance to reach the end. It’s also important that as a player, I feel like it was me that failed, but these things combined made me blame the game for my deaths, which isn’t good for wanting to try another time.
Over all though, very nice style and an interesting core mechanic.
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/XN07Cymbm8I
I’m always so down for hand-drawn style, especially the “pen drawing” style, as it ticks some of the “analog” boxes for me, playing “games” on paper, feels so good.
As I’ve mentioned, I really like the style, drawings were nice and the game felt good.
Some things I’ve noticed: not a lot of risk in the fight it felt that I can just kite and kill enemies when I get the grip on it. Another thing is that as this is a real-time game it feels like I don’t have to draw a map and in some areas I felt a little bit lost (not too much though). And field of view wasn’t wide enough to see enemies on my sides.
But I’ve enjoyed finishing this game, some trickery, a bunch of fights, nice art, totally working sfx makes it an enjoyable game!
Here’s my play-through:
Thanks for playing the game and posting the gameplay, I'm happy you enjoyed it :)
Thank you for your feedback as well!
Very interesting game. I really like the premise and the art style. It's incredibly charming. Using procedural generation was a smart move. I especially liked the mirrors, stuff like that makes crawlers really interesting. Well done!
Thank you!
I made it to the end! I love the handrawn style and the variety or enemies. Once I figured out the darkness puzzle, it was satisfying to complete it. The randomness made it replayable as well.
I didn't find a way to recover my health, so it seemed that avoiding combat was the best strategy as it served little else than to get you closer to restarting. I think I simply got lucky on my second run, finding a few items to make myself stronger and nearly died in the end but avoided a fight.
Overall a fun entry! Kudos. Gameplay here
Thank you for sticking to the end, wow that was a close call!
The improved version addresses a little bit about strategy: in short, you should dance around a bit to avoid being hit, instead of just bashing the enemies and receiving hits (but it's hard to communicate that!)
There's also a single way to recover health, but you shouldn't really rely on it (rather try to avoid damage on each run and hope a little bit of luck is in your side :))
I like the minimalist style, but I was confused by what exactly was going on. Whether I was being teleported or looped around. The combat I mostly ran from since I couldn't will fights against too many before I dies. And the perspective felt a little weird, Like rather than being in the middle of the tile, I was always stoop on the perimeter.
Thank you for playing!
Yeah, I think I could add some feedback when player is teleported to avoid confusion, both sound effect and some message :D
Running from fights is a good strategy, but you can't always do it so gotta be careful to prevent being cornered!
I fixed the perspective issue a bit in the improved version, thanks for pointing that out!
Very nice, the pen art style is really nice and unique for this jam, it is the part i liked the most. It is easy to get lost as it is hard to tell which parts I have been and which parts I have not been, maybe a map would help or some sort of sharding to help show where to go. But overall fun game to play with nice style of art.
Thank you!
I hesitated to include a map because the feeling of getting lost was part of the design but I understand it can create a lot of frustration. I think including some furniture to the level would have helped a lot but there just wasn't enough time :/
Very cool! The graphics were definitely alluring, and the pen-scribble enemies are very charming : ) A way to regain health would be awesome, maybe I just didn’t find a way haha. Overall, very silly game : )
Thanks! There IS a way to recover health but for the most part the idea is to avoid being hit by dancing around the level and timing your way in combat
I like the graphic style! I included it in my compilation video series of all of the games from the Dungeon Crawler Jam.
Thank you for givig it a go!
This must be one of my favs entries from this year. Liked the simplicity and the paper-look style of every aspect of the game.
Good work!
Thank you! :)
Really enjoyed the art style and concept but got stuck in the first section. So many doors and none of them right q.q
Thanks!
Make sure to read the signs and don't rush it :)
Nice, I like the minimalist graphic style, and most of the puzzles were fun to go through.
One readability problem I've had: you can see the enemies from several squares away in a straight line, but they're never visible diagonally (even though the floor and walls are visible). It's a bit confusing.
Thanks!
Working on fixing that issue! :)
It's a bit ugh because monsters and level are drawn separately, so I'll have to merge it back but prevent flickering for the walls and floors scrawly lines algorithm.
I liked the art and feel of the game.
I played 4 times, but the last time I couldnt get out of the loop it seemed like. Think I tried all possibilities I could come up with. Got an blue egg though.
I enjoyed the game!
Thanks!
Sorry to hear you never found the blue chicken :(
Really liked the blue on white design. I didn't make it far though, got lost all the time and seemed to be stuck in a loop even when I walked on the dark. Also a more traditional Q/E rotate with WASD move/strafe could help
Thank you! yeah, getting lost was meant to be part of the experience but I missed some element to make it more enjoyable :)
The art style is pretty unique. Loved it!
I got lost all the time without a map =(
Thank you!
Yeah, getting lost is part of the feeling, but I know I could have made it a bit more fun
Really cool art style, and a fun little game.
I struggled a little bit with the perspective. It was difficult sometimes to orient myself since the distance to a wall is so far yet it's not possible to walk another step. Still, good job!
Thank you and thanks for the feedback! I already did some tweaks I plan to release post-jam :)
Love the art, love the randomness but not a fan of the confusing view. I get that it is part of the dream like experience but my brain hurts :-)
I think it was a good call not to include a mini map as this is one of the games I would have ended up playing 99% only looking at the mini map.
Good job & thanks for sharing.
Thank you! for next version I'm doing some perspective changes including extending the depth, and pulling the view a little bit towards the player. I hope that will make it a bit less confusing :)
I loved the art and design overall, very cool! It was very disorienting to try to get around though and I would have really appreciated a map of where I had been or the like. Great job!
Thank you for playing the game!
I thought a LOT about adding a map, but in the end deciding the disorientation part would be part of the dream-like experience, especially for the "warp" puzzles to work fine. It's a HARD call!
Big respect for standing behind intentional design decisions, and I think you def accomplished what you set out to do!
I adore the art style! I’d love to take part in a “Only hand drawn assets” jam – I wonder if that’s a thing?
I found the combat a nothing-y, maybe I missed something, but I just hit forward until I won and never felt any danger? Maybe an egg I got was OP?
My experience was also that it was very easy to get lost, I wish there was just one more tile of “render distance”, or more variety in the areas, because I took my a lot longer than I care to admit to realise the start looped.
Thank you for playing!
> I found the combat a nothing-y, maybe I missed something, but I just hit forward until I won and never felt any danger?
It's a bit simplistic, but I think it works pretty well when you are forced to maneuver around the room and try to avoid being hit; I possibly erred on the "easy" side in the last balancing touch, so that people could experience the game (maybe if you had had 1/3 of hit points, you cannot just bash your way to victory)
> My experience was also that it was very easy to get lost, I wish there was just one more tile of “render distance”, or more variety in the areas, because I took my a lot longer than I care to admit to realise the start looped.
I'm a bit torn on this part since I did want people to feel weirdly lost, but I agree one more tile of viewing distance, and adding more things to each area would have improved the experience definitively.
I eventually did it in 3.47.29 with 3 eggs after a couple of retries.
The game is pretty fun. I didn't overly rely on moving back, smash and repeat, as fleeing and/or fighting back when not allowed to flee is more fun, and this way the difficulty was appropriate, which is cool. I enjoyed the teleporter and darkness puzzles. and that the power-up eggs are meaningful.
I love the visuals, the game looks super nice, I like the sound effects too and the movement gives a satisfying snappy feeling.
Not sure whether this is just a matter of taste but I didn't love that you can't know when there's a door behind the tile next to you, and the cooldown-based combat overall works in the context of the game but it's still a bit slow and not super exciting the rare times you really need to engage with it to death.
It's slightly off-topic but that's also the first opportunity I have to thank you for everything you're bringing to the gaming community,
Congratulations and thank for you sticking through it and finishing the game! :)
> Not sure whether this is just a matter of taste but I didn't love that you can't know when there's a door behind the tile next to you,
Not sure I got this one, you mean like in one of the walls in front of you, but left or right, you cannot see if there's a door? Or you mean at the tiles left or right of you?
> the cooldown-based combat overall works in the context of the game but it's still a bit slow and not super exciting the rare times you really need to engage with it to death.
Yeah, I think it works when you can maneuver around, but if you are pushed against a wall, it's a bit underwhelming probably.
> It's slightly off-topic but that's also the first opportunity I have to thank you for everything you're bringing to the gaming community,
Thank you <3 <3
> in one of the walls in front of you, but left or right, you cannot see if there's a door?
Yes, what confused me might have been that a door appears as a wall in this case while it appears as a normal navigable tile in some other perspectives, I'm not certain.
Yeah, I cut some corners there because of the time constraints, like, doors are only rendered on the wall directly in front (not in the walls left and right). Guess it'd make sense to fix it post-jam.
Thanks!