Hatch Tales is one of those games that’s had what can only be described as a dumpster fire of a development cycle, and after years in the oven, it’s finally arrived. But was it worth the wait? Here’s our review. 

The answer to the big question is, honestly, no. It was not worth the wait. Hatch Tales is by no means a bad game, but what started life as a joyous little adventure about a chicken and his worm friend has turned into a soulless mishmash of ideas that perfectly reflects its troubled history. 

Way back when the eShop first opened on the Nintendo 3DS, I discovered a lovely little game called Mutant Mudds. It played like a cross between Virtual Boy Wario Land and Gargoyle’s Quest. It wasn’t a masterpiece, by any means, but it was exactly the right game at exactly the right time on exactly the right platform. It was challenging, fun, and most importantly, had just the right amount of heart. 

It was made by Renegade Kid, who eventually spun off into Atooi, and I followed their subsequent releases with great interest. Xeodrifter was a delightful little Metroid clone, and their then-upcoming Treasurenauts looked like a great time. 

Eventually, they planned to release a game called Chicken Wiggle right around the time when the Nintendo Switch was on its way to market. The general consensus was that the smart move would be to move Chicken Wiggle over to the Switch, since the 3DS audience had all but disappeared overnight, but the game’s creative force, Jools Watsham, disagreed. The 3DS was where Mutant Mudds was a success, so there was no reason to think Chicken Wiggle would be anything less. After all, it was a super charming, original, puzzle platformer with some fun-inspired character designs, an interesting gameplay hook, some great music, and that all-important “heart.” 

Unfortunately, nobody played it. The game flopped. Hard, much to the confusion of Watsham. Of course, this could have been for any number of reasons, but conventional wisdom dictated that it failed because it was a 3DS exclusive in a time when the audience had largely and suddenly left the platform for the Switch. (Where have I heard that before?) 

After enough people told him that they would have bought the game if it was on Switch, he reluctantly launched a Kickstarter, telling people that if they funded his project, he would port Chicken Wiggle to the Switch. The Kickstarter was a success, the project was funded, and as long as nothing completely insane happened, it wouldn’t be long before Chicken Wigle landed on Nintendo’s new hardware, ready to find a new, likely modest, but still grateful audience. 

That was back in 2018. It’s now 2025, and following years of silence, mishandling of funds, baffling ideas, name changes, scope changes, and other assorted nonsense, Chicken Wiggle has finally landed on Switch at the tail end of its life in the form of Hatch Tales, a name with far less personality, and a clear sign that Atooi completely lost the plot with this one. 

Let me reiterate, Hatch Tales is NOT a bad game. It’s fine, which if I’m being honest, is always what it was going to be. But it had such a great personality, and a loving spirit behind it back when it was Chicken Wiggle that it elevated itself to be something memorable. There’s nothing wrong with a game not being the most ambitious project under the sun. It’s okay for a game to have a relatively short runtime so long as what you’re playing was created with love. Chicken Wigle was exactly that, while Hatch Tales feels like an obligation. 

In place of the lovable duo of Chicken and his worm friend Wiggle, you play as Hatch, a flightless hawk with a hookshot. The basic gameplay revolves around using your hookshot to grab onto surfaces and make your way through various obstacle courses, collecting gems and freeing other birds who were caged by a witch in the original game, and have now been caged by a big, scary snow monster. Along the way, there are diamonds and special medallions for you to collect. Finding them all will unlock hidden stages, of which there are quite a lot. Possibly too many. See, Chicken Wiggle was a nice, neat little package that didn’t overstay its welcome. Hatch Tales feels downright daunting to play, especially when you realize what you’re going to have to do to find all the game’s various secrets. 

Hatch Tales works on the antiquated NES Metroid method of secret-keeping. Sure, there are some secrets that you can find using visual cues the stages give you, but I’d say about half of the rest are pure pixel hunts. You have to tackle every stage hugging every wall, hookshotting every inch of surface, in hopes of finding completely invisible paths that lead to secrets. There’s nothing intuitive about them, and I found myself far more frustrated than accomplished when I found them. This is a completely antiquated form of game design, and Atooi should know better. 

When it was a small eShop game, sure. I can forgive a lot when there’s charming characters and great music to keep me company, but in Atooi’s absurd quest to make Hatch Tales more edgy, they sacrificed all of that, including the original game’s gorgeous soundtrack, which left the whole experience feeling lifeless, and like a chore to actually play. 

Which is a terrible shame because there are some genuinely great ideas on display here. Fun new power ups and puzzles that would have felt at home in a Chicken Wiggle sequel, but instead were stuffed in here, feeling half-baked and honestly, kind of sad. 

The secret levels aren’t just more Hatch Tales, though. Some of them are new takes on Mutant Mudds. These are pretty fun to get through, incorporating a double jump instead of the original’s hover mechanic, but every time I played one, I couldn’t help asking, why are these here? It’s all part of the game’s overarching identity crisis. It’s got a great gameplay loop already, but they stuffed a literal other game in for some reason? They sacrificed charming characters for a brown bird with tattoos? They replaced a goofy witch with a genuinely terrifying looking snow monster? They replaced the fun, beautiful music with ambient wind sounds? Sure, the visuals look nice in screenshots, but the world has so few frames of animation it feels like some sort of flash game from the early 2000s. Seriously, many of the enemies have at most 4 frames of animation, which may work when you’re using pixel art, but sure doesn’t cut it when you’ve taken those pixels and turned them into fully realized sprites. 

But the most frustrating thing about all of this is, that game the Kickstarters backed? It’s in there. It’s just buried under a bunch of other stuff. You can still play an updated version of Chicken Wiggle, but you have to unlock it, tackle it piece by piece, and every time I did, it just reminded me that this was all I wanted. This is all this game needed to be, and if they had just stuck to their original vision, delivered what they promised, and taken this energy they put into this bizarre re-invention and applied it to a proper sequel, things probably would have turned out a heck of a lot better. 

I do like that you can take multiple hits now before dying, as the original Chicken Wiggle could get pretty tough, especially with one hit kills, but outside of that, this whole experience feels like a hollow, missed opportunity. 

In the end, there just isn’t enough special about this release to properly recommend it over the hundreds of other puzzle platformers out there. In a world full to the brim with Dadishes and Milli & Gregs, this level of mediocrity just doesn’t cut it. It breaks my heart to see a company whose output has brought me so much joy go down this path, but after the way they treated the people they solicited money from to make this game during their crowdfunding campaign, and the product they ultimately put out, I personally won’t be purchasing another Atooi product ever again. But even if I were to put my personal issues aside, this game is simply unremarkable. You could certainly play worse games, but you could easily play better as well. 

For those fans who did stick around, keep the hope alive. I’m sure they’ll release Treasurenauts someday. 

Hatch Tales is available now on Nintendo Switch.