Cluck Yegger in the Escape from the Planet Poultroid (2015)

Back in 2012, when the Kickstarter boom was at its hottest and every old game developer seemed to crawl to the sun from their hideaways, The Two Guys from Andromeda, Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe, decided to come to the money tap as well, after patching up their own personal relations.

They proposed and successfully funded in the beat of  530k, a sort of a spiritual continuation of their most famous game Space Quest they created when they still worked under Sierra. This time around instead of a space janitor Wilco the main character would be Ace Hardway, a space plumber. This game was titled "SpaceVenture". And this game has not yet been released due to other circumstances. But a small snippet of something that belongs in the world of SpaceVenture has been released and that is the mini-game within the main game, a small horror game called "Cluck Yegger in the Escape from the Planet Poultroid".

There's a nice retro sci-fi vibe going on in Cluck yegger.

Now I don't know, but I've been told, that the style of Cluck Yegger is a parody of a game series called "5 Nights at Freddy's". I don't know it for sure because I haven't played 5 Nights games and I'm too lazy to conduct a gameplay video search on Youtube. But I'll go with what I've been told, as that is the key to success. Or so I've been told.

Morning grace.

Cluck Yegger begins when Yeggers spaceship crash lands on Poultroid, a planet owned by his nemesis, Colonel Zanderz, owner of BFC chicken restaurant chain. In this hell hole, our brave free-range space chicken has to survive 6 nights harassed by mutated chicken beasts. The gameplay itself is pretty simple: you have limited power, which is recharged after each night. You have access to surveillance cameras which you can use to see if there are any mutants close and if there are, you can shoo them off by using lights. All this uses power, so you need to make sure that you don't overspend your reserves before sunrise. Each night gets more difficult to survive, so the closer you get to night 6, the more conservative you need to be with your energy. So what it really is, is a resource management game.

Cluck's cockpit where the whole game is controlled. You can access the cameras, shields, close the cockpit doors and use corridor lights here. This all consumes precious energy.

I'd be lying through my teeth if I'd claim that I think it is a great game so I won't be doing that. It's not really the type of game I'm interested in and I've played it only because I got it free after backing the main game, SpaceVenture, on Kickstarter. But while I don't think it is a great game, I can see people who like this kind of stuff enjoying it.

A mutated chicken in infravision

There are things about it I do like though. I like the graphical style of it and the humour feels very much like you'd expect it to feel for a game developed by Space Quest creators. The voice acting is pretty decent and the music and sound effects work very well. Technically speaking there's nothing wrong with it. All in all, it's a pretty well done little indie game.

One reason why the Two Guys decided to release Cluck Yegger is to try to pad their initial budget a bit, as the development of SpaceVenture has taken a bit longer than they initially envisioned. So if you've liked their Space Quest games and would like to contribute a bit to their ongoing game project, buying Cluck Yegger might be a thing to do, especially if you feel a bit leery towards Kickstarter and would like something more tangible with your money instead. And if you like the genre it represents, then why not give it a shot anyway. I don't know how high it scales among its peers, but technically speaking it is a pretty solid effort.

Cluck Yegger in the Escape from the Planet Poultroid is not yet on Steam, but it was just greenlit, so if you want to pick it up, keep checking the Steam store.