Hey everyone! Today, I want to pull back the curtain on a project I’ve poured my heart into: Chicken Flight. It’s a boss rush game available on the Google Play Store, and I think it offers a really unique experience, especially for mobile.
My journey to create Chicken Flight started with a clear vision and a bit of a challenge to the status quo.
The Spark: From Cuphead to a Mobile Mission
Like many, I was absolutely captivated by games like Cuphead. The sheer creativity, the brutal difficulty, and especially those incredibly unique, beautifully animated boss fights – they left a huge impression. I loved the idea of a game where every encounter felt like a distinct, memorable challenge. That core concept of a pure boss rush experience became the bedrock of what I wanted to build.
But I also saw a gap in the mobile gaming world. It often feels saturated with "free-to-play" games that lean heavily on aggressive monetization, countless ads, and hundreds of dollars in in-app purchases. I wanted to push back against that. My goal with Chicken Flight was to create a truly premium-feeling experience on mobile, offering a deep, challenging game with an extraordinarily minimized ad presence. In fact, you can watch one ad at the end of a run to refill your hearts, and that’s it. My aim was to prove that mobile games can be just as engaging and respectful of your time as their console or PC counterparts.
The Boss Rush Loop: Crafting Challenge from Cuphead & Mega Man
So, with the "why" established, the "how" began. Designing the boss fights for Chicken Flight was a meticulous process. I spent countless hours dissecting the aerial battles in Cuphead and the iconic, pattern-based bosses of Mega Man. These games offered a masterclass in telegraphing attacks, creating dynamic arenas, and building a sense of escalating tension.
My goal was to ensure each boss felt distinct and offered a genuine test of skill. This meant a lot of trial and error, followed by even more tweaking. Balancing the difficulty wasn't about making it artificially hard, but about making it fair – rewarding player observation, timing, and quick reflexes. Each boss, from their initial design to their final attack patterns, underwent numerous iterations to ensure they hit that sweet spot of challenging but achievable. The interim waves between bosses also grew organically, with new enemies added after each boss defeat, keeping the pressure on and the experience fresh.
A New Kind of Progression: Escaping the Skill Tree with Kingdom Hearts
While I loved the boss rush concept, I also wanted the meta-progression to feel equally fresh. I've always found traditional skill trees in roguelikes to be a bit… predictable. You put points here, you unlock that. I wanted something more tactile, more strategic, and visually engaging.
This is where Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days became a huge inspiration. Its panel-based upgrade system, where you physically arranged abilities and items on a grid, sparked an idea. Why not apply that to a mobile boss rush game?
And so, Chicken Flight's unique meta-progression system was born! Instead of a skill tree, you earn various upgrades represented as Tetris-esque shapes. These aren't just cosmetic; each shape grants a specific buff or new weapon. After each run, you use points to buy these unlocks, and then comes the puzzle: you have to fit them into a grid to activate them for your next run.
The genius (and challenge!) of this system is that your grid isn't static. The more bosses you beat, the larger your upgrade grid becomes. This means you can strategically fit more and more powerful shapes, allowing for deeper customization and empowering you to go further into the game. The logic behind handling the grid, rotating shapes, and ensuring valid placement was, in essence, a really fun exercise in a bunch of math – bringing the puzzle elements to life behind the scenes.
Experience the Flight!
Building Chicken Flight has been a journey of passion, drawing inspiration from classic games while striving to create something genuinely new for mobile players. It's a game designed for challenge, strategy, and pure, unadulterated fun, without the usual mobile monetization baggage.
If you're looking for a demanding boss rush experience with a truly unique progression system, I invite you to check out Chicken Flight on the Google Play Store. See how far you can fly!