This covers the game as of its current state in May 2026, as a Steam Early Access game. Future updates of the game may change elements or aspects that may no longer apply to portions of this article.
Roguelikes (and its sibling roguelites) are an enigma to me. I’m one of those people that prefer a clear beginning and ending to games, and having something where I’m starting from scratch and have to complete a “run” isn’t always fun. Granted, in a lot of these the player is given upgrades and unlocks to eventually lead to an ending, but pouring hours into it is not something I actively enjoy doing for a game unless I really like it.
The closest I’ve ever actually gotten the proper ending to a roguelike was The Binding of Isaac in 2014. Other times I dabbled in the genre, like Teleglitch or Ziggurat, were ones I bounced off of because while I liked the environment of the worlds that I was inhabiting, I didn’t really like the mechanics of having to start from scratch each time, becoming little more than rote memorization by that point. It’s like being forced to complete a game in one life with no continues, while some like that challenge, I’m not really a fan of it. That isn’t to say I hate the genre, there are some I enjoyed. Recently I got to try a fairly recent one of these kind of roguelike.
Chickenauts is a rougelite shooter released in Steam Early Access in March 2026. Co-developed by Sneakybox (developers of Atari’s Recharged series of games) and Kautki Cave (Flame Keeper), and published by Untold Tales. I don’t know much about the publisher or developers, but they seem to make perfectly fine video games, so I expected the same here.
Our hero, a red-bearded farmer, finds out his chickens have been abducted by Brooster, an alien chicken who wants to rule the world. With only his trusty weapon, he must invade the spaceship and take down Brooster and his possessed chicken foes, with a little help and some fancy footwork.
Chickenauts is a top-down roguelite shooter. The mouse aims at targets, left mouse button shoots. Right mouse button and spacebar cause the player to dodge, which is important as enemies will shoot bullets that must be dodged to avoid taking damage. After a room is cleared, the player progresses to the next room to fight more foes, lather, rinse, repeat. During these runs, there will be friendly NPCs to save that help the player in future runs, or sidekicks that will help deal with the dastardly foes more quickly. If you’ve played games like Enter the Gungeon or Nuclear Throne, you might be familiar with a lot of these mechanics from the get-go.
In addition to the trusty sidearm, our hero can rescue sidekicks that can help in battle. Examples include a gun-toting chicken named John Chick, or a chicken who does whirlwinds named Gojo Chicku. There’s something amusing there, with some pop culture references, but they should’ve learned harder into these, maybe giving them some goofy lines or more playful references.
These might also need rebalancing, as John Chick might be a bit overpowered. A second gun firing at targets for you within a certain range, that could have other weapons and powerups do damage for you without really thinking too hard? The other options just feel like a downgrade in comparison, even if I were to give them upgrades during a run. Most of my most successful runs were with John Chick, and not Mary Chickens. Here’s hoping they eventually rebalance the sidekicks so they all have their uses, and maybe introduce a few new ones that could shake up the rooster, er, roster.
Sometimes the game will throw in chests or areas that require keys to unlock, which can give additional coins, one time use potions, or personal upgrades. There’s definitely a risk-reward factor in play, but in most cases unless it was something I needed like health or an extremely rare chest showed up, I mostly avoided unlocking these because keys were often scarce.
Occasionally the path will take you to special rooms, like upgrade rooms for the sidekicks, a free powerup, or even a shop; where one can spend coins on powerups, health or gambling with a slot machine/gacha machine hybrid to unlock free rewards.
After a few rooms, there will be a miniboss, which all have the same tactic: they’ll have a protective shield that does no direct damage to them, then they’ll do a massive attack that fires bullets that must be dodged, break the shield, and then be exposed to taking damage. If any of this sounds familiar to anyone well-versed in the roguelike shooter genre genre, then congratulations, you figured out what makes Chickenauts tick. Or bawk, in this case.
The weaponry seems to balance between realistic like a pistol, to unusual weapons like a kebab that acts like a shotgun, or a rubber chicken that works like a charged sword. These are quite interesting choices, but I often ended up going with the kebab because it did enough damage quickly to make certain rooms easy. Add onto that certain powerups and potions I acquired basically made the kebab an absolute death cannon. Though, it’s weird that concept art and in-game arts show realistic weapons like a shotgun and a sniper rifle, of which you cannot currently equip in game.
There’s also potions in the game, that can give the player certain abilities. These are one time use, and can either be found locked away between doors, dropped occasionally by the game, or available to buy in the shop for coins. Some of the potion abilities bounce between “have some free coins and keys!” or “let’s double your damage for a single room,” which made clearing some places out really effective.
Some potions, on the other hand, aren’t really effective. One will heal for a single health point, identical to a chicken leg pickup. While there’s no penalty potions that could harm the player, it just became a gamble to grab a potion unless I didn’t have one or had spare coin lying about. Worst part is that every potion looks identical outside of its color. I get what the developers were trying to do: look at the color to distinguish what potion had what effect, but sometimes the colors were so similar to one another that it didn’t help. I ignored potions in places if they were hard to reach or had no purpose for me at that moment. The potions should have a much easier-to-tell distinction, like uniquely shaped bottles that can tell the player what their purpose is from a glance beyond the color scheme.
The one big issue in the room is how there isn’t a lot of world building or lore. Things to pick up to tell you what’s going on, more characters willing to chat about things happening, something to give a bit of flavor to the world we inhabit. While you do rescue characters that will help you out in your journey, they only have one stock thing to say, and little else for variety. Other games like Vampire Survivors had an absurd lore dump made for it, and it helped make it stand out. Chickenauts doesn’t have anything like that, so I just end up killing the chickens with reckless abandon and listened to the NPCs once or twice before moving on. Even giving the sidekicks some witty dialogue would be a slight improvement.
There’s also the handful of bugs I got, including one where my sidekick got stuck on debris I did not destroy and could not successfully walk to the upgrade chamber, forcing me to abruptly end a run. It’s unfortunate, but thankfully not incredibly common.
While I haven’t successfully completed a run as of this writing, I’ve played enough Chickenauts to put into words. It’s a passable, but forgettable roguelite shooter. It’s not gonna set the world on fire.
This genre already has basically solidified into a refined state, and Chickenauts isn’t gonna hang with its contemporaries unless it does a lot, lot more than what this early access version is giving. I’m talking more features, lore, weapons, sidekicks, anything to give me an incentive to defeat Brooster besides “HE TOOK YOUR CHICKENS!”. I hope the developers take some time to update and refine this game before it hits 1.0, because there is something interesting here, but otherwise it’s another roguelite that’s gonna get lost in a sea of similar, better games in the same genre. I had a bit of fun with it, at least.
You can get Chickenauts on Steam, and at a pretty decent bargain. if you’ve gotten your fill of Enter the Gungeon and similar roguelites and want a different one of those to pass the time until Enter the Gungeon 2 hits, this could fill that void. But much like gas station chicken and jo-jos, they might be tasty, but you’ll get a bit of regret afterwards. Chickenauts has its heart in the right place, it just needs a bit more than what’s on offer.
One day I will find a roguelike/roguelite/rouge-ish game that I consider the cream of the crop. Until then, I think I’m okay playing games with a definitive sense of progression. I already spent dozens of hours in similar genres, I’d like to stick to stuff that I can beat and see credits in 10 hours or less, not hundreds.
A product key was provided by Player Found, a gaming marketing agency, for review.
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