Ultimate Chicken Horse

I cover shooters for a living, so when the Scout Team drops a party platformer on my desk I'm usually the wrong person to ask. But I've been burned enough times by "just one more round" sessions of Ultimate Chicken Horse to give it a straight read. The core loop is brutally simple: up to four players each place one object per round, choosing from platforms, spikes, wrecking balls, cannon-firing blocks, crumbling platforms, and a growing toolkit of hazards, then everyone races from start to flag. Score only if you finish and at least one other player doesn't. Nobody finishes, or everybody does, and the round pays out nothing. That scoring rule alone changes everything about how people play. The movement holds up under pressure. Characters run, jump, wall-jump, and slide with physics that stay consistent no matter how chaotic the constructed level gets. When you die, it almost always feels like your own fault, which is rarer than it sounds in a game built on player-made hazards. The controls have a precision-platformer tightness to them, closer in feel to Super Meat Boy than to the looser party game physics you might expect. That matters because by round four or five, the level is genuinely difficult, and the difference between finishing and not finishing comes down to reading your own traps correctly. Skilled players who know the wall-jump rhythm will beat casual friends consistently, so be aware of skill gaps in mixed lobbies. Party Mode is the main event and it earns that label. The scoring system rewards sabotage calibrated just right: too easy and everyone scores, too hard and nobody does, and both outcomes leave you with zero points. That creates a constant push-pull where placing a trap is as much a psychological read on your opponents as it is a platforming puzzle. The game ships with 21 built-in levels, each with environmental gimmicks, from volcano maps with lava streams to dance floors with obtrusive lighting rigs. There is also a community level hub where players upload custom stages, which adds a long tail of content if you want it. Clever Endeavour has kept updating the game for years, adding characters like Panda in a free 2024 update, plus past additions like a boxing glove block and a race-focused flat mode that strips scoring down to finish order. The honest caveat is the one the developer puts right on the store page: this is a multiplayer game, full stop. The challenge mode, where you attempt community-uploaded levels solo, is decent busywork but misses the entire point. Online matchmaking works and cross-platform play means PC, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox players share pools, which keeps queue times reasonable. That said, the magic is loudest with people in the same room reacting in real time. Online sessions are fun but they lose the immediate social chaos that makes the game memorable. Concurrent player counts on Steam sit in the low hundreds on a typical day, so random online lobbies exist but are thin outside peak hours. Bring your own group when possible. Fred, Scout Team