BEHEMOTH Review

Developer and publisher, The Behemoth, who you will know as the creators of the awesome Castle Crashers game, is back with a title that feels like Flappy Bird on steroids. Called an “arcade extravaganza”, you play as a chunky chicken, whose goal is to collect as many baby chicks as possible and fly through the checkpoints that look like they have been made out of twigs, like a bird's nest.

As soon as the title menu for BEHEMOTH opens, we see blue skies and hear the wind constantly blowing. You will see the high score from yesterday's champion, along with the best scores in the last 24 hours from everyone playing the game. In addition, the amount of checkpoints that each player cleared is also recorded. So your main goals are to get a better high score, or travel further in the game and clear more checkpoints.

Before jumping into the action, you will need to customise your chicken. To do this, select the icon with the clothes hanger (though at the start you can only change your bird's colour). As you progress, options for colour, crown, eyes, beak, wattle, body, tail, and feet will be available to customise. Once you are done designing your character, you are ready to take to the skies to collect — what I am assuming is — the chicken’s favourite treat, Candy Corn, and any other young birds you encounter.

The controls in BEHEMOTH are incredibly simple: you flap your wings by tapping the bottom face button if you are playing with a gamepad — or if you don’t want to continuously tap, you can just hold it down. To move the bird around, you will use the left thumbstick. The goal in this game is also incredibly simple: collect as many chicks as you can and grab the Candy Corn that falls out of the sky. While doing this, you have to try to fly through the bird nest rings, the game uses arrows and rainbows to point towards them so you don’t totally fly past. The rings act as checkpoints and will earn you points that will be posted on the game's main screen. Baby birds hang out on these “nest” hoops and will join you when you fly through one. If you fly past one, don’t worry, your game won’t instantly be over. That will happen if you fall far enough down that you hit the bottom of the screen, becoming a roasted bird. I’m not kidding, the game actually shows your chicken cooked on a silver serving platter…

I know flying around the stage sounds easy, but you will quickly discover what a hellscape this place is. As you fly, you are greeted with happy music and brightly-coloured food. This all sounds nice until you realise the celery, loaves of bread, grapes, cups of coffee, and eggs (along with their sharp, pointed shells) fly towards you to take away the baby birds you pick up. Flying alongside you are sharp knives and forks that inflict massive damage and take away a lot of the baby chicks you have collected. However, if you pick up sunflower seeds, you will have a barrier around your bird to block some of the damage. It sucks when you have a large cluster of birdies and the number drops down to three, meaning you have to gather all the chicks once again. You can catch a ride on a loaf of bread (it sounds like a train) but the fruit is not your friend in BEHEMOTH, particularly cantaloupe slices, because of their curved shape. If it lands on you, it will trap you and push your bird to the bottom of the screen, quickly ending your run if you don’t escape fast enough.

BEHEMOTH is a super simple endless runner title, with a bunch of crazy customisation options for your chicken. At first, it is a chaotic and frantic experience, but as you learn how to avoid all the items and obstacles in your way it becomes a lot more manageable. If you enjoy games where you are trying to get the highest score possible and where you want to be on top of the leaderboard, this title is for you. It also runs great on the Steam Deck and will work great for quick play sessions. For some people, I think after a few hours, this game will become quite repetitive. However, if you are like me and are a person who loves titles like Flappy Bird where you have to go back over and over again to beat your score, you will have a fun time with this arcade game, especially with the low price point! There is something super satisfying about gathering a cluster of 400 chicks while trying to not get crushed by the stalks of celery flying towards you.