Egg vs. Chicken

Eggs can be formidable weapons against the right target – a waxed car, an out-of-tune singer, a canvassing politician.

Egg vs. Chicken uses eggs as weapons against what many would consider the wrong target – chickens.

But the premise of play doesn't really matter. The game has you trying to stop chicks making their way down the screen by matching eggs in groups of three or more, slipping them onto a launch pad, and firing them at the approaching birds.

The eggs themselves appear on a 7x4 grid and can be slid from one side to the other with a stroke of a finger. The problem is, an egg won't stop sliding until it hits something – whether the edge of the grid itself, another egg, or a growing array of obstacles.

Once the eggs are good to go, a flick of a finger sends them flying toward the chickens, with some birds taking several hits before they go down.

As the levels pass, the intensity ratchets up. First the birds themselves begin to get more menacing – seeing a great big rooster waddle slowly towards you is genuinely a bit intimidating – but so too does your arsenal.

The eggs also ramp up with red, fiery eggs taking out your fowl foes with relative ease. As the game gets more intense, so it has more and more in common with a time-management game than a match-three puzzler – even the slightest slip up can cost you a level.

Bonuses - land mines, bombs, and defensive boosts - are unlocked with the stars earned from strong performances in each stage. These help immensely and can be the difference between success and failure.

Often the line between the two is too small. There's no middle ground when it comes to the game's difficulty: it's either challenging and attainable, or ridiculously difficult and a pain in the neck.

Such is the setup employed by Egg vs. Chicken that all it can do to extend what is admittedly a simple framework is pile more chickens into play and clutter up the egg board. As such, the game loses its exacting and enthralling nature quickly and edges towards being plain annoying.

Levels that offer any sense of balance between the two become few and far between the more you play.

While the good times last, Egg vs. Chicken is entertaining. It's too shallow to deliver long term, but the quick-to-the-boil nature doesn't completely sour what remains a light bite.