This is a free game by Blue Frog Gaming that is fit for Halloween. Ghost Chicken is one of those titles in the App Store that was made to capitalize on the season, and it does just that in a pretty novel way. This game brings forth a new gameplay concept that looks pretty fun and wacky, but still solid enough to be a good game in itself.

The game is all about collecting corn, which is something chickens would be doing quite a lot. But this chicken is a ghost chicken, whose neck can grow longer. The concept for the gameplay is quite cool and unique in that it’s like a combination of Snake and Pacman in that you have a chicken that grows its neck longer to eat all the corn kernels underground, as well as insects that may pass by. You lose a life if an insect touches your neck, so you may let go to have the chicken retract its neck quickly. Once you do so, you can readjust and eat the remaining corn.

It’s also a game of speed in that there are time bonuses and if you’re quick enough during the game, you can grab the neck as it retracts so you can eat more of the corn or insects that may be there midway. It also lets you think of a good path to take at a given moment so you gobble up corn and passing insects as quickly as you can. You have to predict the movements of the insects and time your approach. You also get power ups and bombs, so you have to definitely think about where to go on the fly.

The visuals are simple, yet quite nicely rendered. Everything can be seen and distinguished immediately, which helps with making gameplay smoother. There is also some good stuff with the music, creating a bit of a creepy ambience that’s balanced out by the cartoonish 8-bit sounds that make the ghost chicken quite a freak, especially when it retracts its neck. With the context of the game in relation to the sound effects, this game can already win the attention of players.

But even with the awesome concept, it can get old quite quickly, so watch out while you’re playing the hell out of this game. Perhaps it’s from how novel the game design is, but perhaps its repetitive nature is such that it gets boring fast. But then again, you will have the urge to finish as many levels as you can, so there may just be a competitive component to it as well with the scores. Maybe it’s up to the players’ preferences. The three difficulty levels are quite cool as well, giving you challenge as you see fit.

Maybe the real drawback here is your finger obscuring a bit of what’s onscreen, so maybe you’ll find yourself with one life less later on as an insect hits the neck without you knowing. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty good Halloween game for the iOS and is worth the download. Since it’s free, the only thing that you can lose in this game is the time it takes to get a hang of it.