Mort the Chicken is a 3D Platform Game released on the PlayStation in 2000, developed by AndNow and published by Crave Entertainment. One of its developers, Ed Annunziata, previously created Ecco the Dolphin, with this game being a very different take on an animal-based game.
In a world where chickens are the dominant lifeform on Earth, a parallel dimension populated by cubes known as the Boolyon has just discovered its existence. They do not come in peace, as they have mistaken the native hay bales of the planet as kidnapped members of their kind. Their leader, Colonel Cubicles, instigates an invasion, capturing the chickens' baby chicks as hostages. Most chickens are far too, well, chicken to retaliate, with one exception: Mort, a television star who heroically (or stupidly) dives into the nearest well the chicks are being sucked into and begins his quest to save them from the Boolyon dimension.
The gameplay is incredibly simple: Mort moves around levels searching for baby chicks, who follow behind him when they touch him and fly away when he takes damage not unlike in Flicky or Sonic 3D Blast. To finish a level, Mort has to bring the baby chicks to a well that acts as an exit portal, while fending off the cubes with his long comb-whip and various power-ups.
The game was a critical and commercial failure and quickly fell into obscurity after release, but did manage to get some attention decades later for its bizarre, surreal nature and dry-humor cutscenes. In particular, Mort makes an appearance as a power-up character in the 2023 indie game Pizza Tower, as a royalty-free cameo permitted by Ed Annunziata.
Tropes:
- Apathetic Citizens: At the start of the game, most chickens treat the kidnapping of their young as mildly as they would treat bad weather, to the point of finding Mort's heroism suspicious. When Colonel Cubicles gives them a 24-hour advance warning to "free the cubes", BAWC reports on it 23 hours and 50 minutes later.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Carl Cockerel finds the existence of sentient cubes sensible, but draws the line at the idea that they originated from another dimension, and that them having lived underground the entire time is more logical.
- Aside Glance: Mort sometimes looks directly at the camera during gameplay.
- Boss-Only Level: The game's only two bosses are fought in back-to-back levels named after them at the end of the game.
- Buffy Speak: The Boolyon refer to the chickens and their chicks as "soft, squishy things" prior to learning what they are called.
- Cap: Mort can only carry up to twelve chicks at a time. This only comes up in the one level that has more than twelve chicks to save, "Chicks".
- Carnivore Confusion: One of the last cutscenes of the game has an unnamed chicken ask Carl Cockerel what part of a chicken the "nugget" comes from, making him extremely nervous.
- Cool Gate: The chicken world and the Boolyon dimension are connected by water wells, of all things, serving as each level's spawn point and exit point where collected chicks are deposited. One cutscene (from an unwilling chicken cameraman's perspective) shows that the well's stones eventually give way to a swirling blue-green void.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: In the ending cutscene, Cubicles sheepishly admits that he could've avoided the decimation of the Boolyon if he had learned what the chickens' hay bales really were rather than jumping to conclusions.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The official website had a character profile for Mort
consisting of three paragraphs just redundantly describing how the chicken was designed to react to his surroundings. - Evil Sounds Deep: Cubicles has a deep voice that sounds like Darth Vader.
- Fearless Fool: While he never says anything about it, this is how the other chickens interpret Mort's willingness to dive into the unknown to save the chicks. Apparently, it was the result of him being an unwilling participant in a rocket sled test.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Mort being the oxymoron of a brave chicken leaves the public and news confused at best and suspecting him of being a traitor at worst, though this attitude mostly goes away once Mort makes significant progress in saving the chicks.
- Heroic Mime: Despite the other chickens being capable of speech, Mort only communicates through clucking.
- Joke Level: "Coins" and "Chicks", two small enemy-free levels with inverted jokes: the former has a ton of coins and only one chick to save, while the latter has many chicks and only one coin.
- Kent Brockman News:
- The game regularly cuts to news reports from BAWC, the news channel of the chicken universe, as newscasters Chicken Little and Henny Penny provide ongoing coverage of Mort's mission, with occasional feedback from expert Carl Cockerel.
- During the ending, we see a report from the cube dimension's own news channel, CUBE, in which newscaster Perry Lellogram announces that the misunderstanding between the chickens and the cubes has been cleared up.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Carl Cockerel, despite being billed as a general expert, makes wild and inaccurate claims, such as Mort betraying chicken-kind by not being cowardly, and the cubes taking away the chicks to have a sleepover. He then berates Henny Penny for correcting him with the facts, despite openly admitting that "random speculation" is his job.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Doctor Cockerel dismisses Henny Penny's theory that the cubes are from an alternate dimension, saying that if she's going to engage in random speculation, she may as well say that they're all images on a screen being manipulated by featherless bipeds in some kind of video game.
- Mistook the Dominant Lifeform: A variant: with no knowledge of non-cube life, Colonel Cubicles assumes the chickens are masterminds of a kidnapping plot after seeing stacks of cube-packed hay bales on all their farms.
- Monochrome Past: We get a brief flashback explaining Mort's fearlessness and Prehensile Hair, which is presented in grainy black-and-white like an old 1930s newsreel.
- Morton's Fork: He has a change of heart by the end, but in one cutscene Carl Cockerel explains that, regardless of whether he's working for or against the Boolyon, Mort is a traitor to chicken-kind for trying to solve a problem rather than panicking mindlessly.Chicken Little: So if he's helping, he's a problem, and if he's a problem...he's a problem.Dr. Cockerel: Exactly.
- Orphaned Etymology: Lampshaded; at one point, Chicken Little uses the term "rule of thumb." Henny Penny asks what a "thumb" is. Chicken Little can only stare blankly before replying, "I don't know."
- Prehensile Hair: For a given definition of "hair"; Mort's main method of attack is whipping his stretchy chicken comb around to hit enemies.
- Pretentious Pronunciation: Colonel Cubicles (rhymes with Sophocles).
- Rapid-Fire Comedy: The style of humor in the cutscenes, which fits with the "channel surfing" theme.
- Running Gag: The game cuts to a chicken exercise program multiple times as a non-sequitur gag.
- Secret Level: Entering the word BONUS in the Cheat Screen takes you to "Chemical Factory", a hidden level only teased in the ending cinematic.
- Signing-Off Catchphrase: Chicken Little and Henny Penny both have their own unique sign-offs, usually involving references to nursery rhymes or common sayings featuring chickens.
- Sistine Steal: The loading screens feature famous works of art with Mort and other chickens in place of humans, one of them being Michelangelo Buonarroti's "The Creation of Adam".
- Trademark Favorite Food: Mort's health bar is represented by an ear of corn, and he heals by pecking at piles of kernels on the ground.
- The Unfought: Colonel Cubicles is never fought, and in fact never even appears in gameplay; the Boolyon army surrenders offscreen after Mort defeats the two final bosses.
- When Dimensions Collide: The basic premise is that two dimensions exist, one Earth-like and inhabited by sentient chickens, the other abstract and inhabited by sentient cubes. The cubes mistake the chickens' hay bales for captured members of their own kind, and invade through a portal in a well to kidnap the chickens' chicks as ransom.
