The hidden competitive scene of Ultimate Chicken Horse

What do you get when you mix Super Mario Maker multiplayer lobbies with cute animals? What about horse-slicing, raccoon-punting, monkey-punching, chicken-shooting and snake-sawing objects? Ultimate Chicken Horse, obviously.

Ultimate Chicken Horse is a 2D, hand-drawn, animal-filled, multiplayer platformer with a twist. In every round, every player gets to place an object — which can be dangerous or in some way annoying — somewhere along the small map to make it more difficult for others to platform their way to the finish. The goal is to get to the other side of the map, but since it gradually fills up with circular saws, black holes, crossbows, hockey pucks, bee hives and many other objects that will one-shot players, the hope is your opponents do not. It is a fantastic party game for getting away with hilarious, miraculous runs and annoying some friends.

And where there’s competition, there are god-tier level players. Ultimate Chicken Horse has drawn some of the most tactical, precise and speediest platform gamers. The game may not have Super Mario Maker’s player numbers or Celeste’s speedrun infrastructure, but its endearing animations, cute sounds, precise gameplay and involved developer, Clever Endeavour, have turned the competitive scene into a small family.

But make no mistake: Ultimate Chicken Horse is no joke. Yes, Bojack, one of the game’s best players, may think it is “a relatively easy game to get good at.” But, for the less talented players, even beating friends who compete once in a blue moon can be a struggle.

The top Ultimate Chicken Horse players

According to Bojack, the community of top UCH players constantly changes, as is evident in the documentary-style video he made about in-game rivalries. He explained that many have taken breaks over the years or disappeared completely, while some others have stuck around.

One such player is named Coldheart. With many community tournaments and world record speedruns on some of the most difficult custom maps under his belt, he is widely considered to be the GOAT of the game. Kyatta is another name in the conversation of best players, as he won every single tournament for a year straight when Coldheart took a break and Bojack was still only on the rise. But once Coldheart was back and Bojack made a name for himself, the three started trading blows.

“I am pretty confident that in any tournament that any one of the three of us have entered since 2018, nobody else has won,” Bojack said.

However, Bojack does note that while he has been at Coldheart and Kyatta’s level across the game’s entire history, he should not be placed among them. While he has beaten them in the past, his consistency and dominance over the years do not come close to the number of matches the two titans have won. Also, according to Bojack, Coldheart has only ever lost to Kyatta in tournaments.

That is not to say they are the only other good players. In the grand final of the UCH Scholarship Tournament, back in December of 2020, players Vid and SyndromeDeadSoul showcased a high level of skill during a tight battle.

The final highlighted the intricacies of Ultimate Chicken Horse, which go deeper than just having good mechanical platforming skills. Players have to go on a truly clever endeavour to make a map as hard as possible for their opponents but still doable for themselves.

For example, Bojack recently played against a player called Aspie, who is notorious for specific setups.

“In my set with him, he wasn’t able to build any of those things because I’m good for spotting areas where they might be possible to create and changing them preemptively,” he said. “Another player played against Aspie, and Aspie was able to win by setting these things up all over the place. At face value, me and the other player didn’t build so differently, but if you look at it in depth you’ll be able to see the difference. But it’s very nuanced, and never takes place in a single item placement.”

Either way, the emergent gameplay makes for an unpredictable map, where players have to be smart about how they want to set up a difficult obstacle. Building the map over time is an important aspect of the game. Having the foresight to mess up an opponent’s plans is what gives the best players an edge.