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Chicken Invaders is a series of shoot 'em ups about saving the world from invading cosmic chickens. What "the world" is in this context varies between the games:

  • Chicken Invaders: The first game in the series, where it's planet Earth that's constantly getting attacked.
  • Chicken Invaders 2: The Next Wave: The second game, where you need to clear out the entire solar system of chickens.
  • Chicken Invaders 3: Revenge of the Yolk: After being pushed into a black hole by the Yolk-Star and ending up in the other side of the galaxy, you must traverse the entire galaxy and clearing chickens along the way as you try to get back to Earth in time to stop the Yolk-Star from mobilizing to destroy Earth.
  • Chicken Invaders 4: Ultimate Omelette: And then once you're through doing that, an alien ship from another galaxy asks for your help to stop the Vitelline Molecular Propulsor (commonly known as the Egg Cannon), putting you into a galactic adventure to pursue the Egg Cannon before it reaches Earth and destroys the planet.
  • Chicken Invaders 5: Cluck of the Dark Side: A titanic chicken-made ship called the CK-01 Henterprise has dispersed giant black feathers blocking off the sun, with the intent to lower the Earth's climate to uninhabitable temperatures. After consulting the oracle Madam Madámme on a solution to the feathered problem, you seek out three alien artifacts scattered throughout the galaxy to construct Humanity's Greatest Fan, the only hope to the feathered problem, all while the Henterprise sends its chicken minions stop you from retrieving the artifacts.
  • Universe: A spin-off where you (not the same Hero from the previous five games), a fresh recruit for the United Heroes Force, travel throughout the galaxy to liberate wherever star system you stop by from chickens. And you get to fight waves and bosses of the third to fifth games, as well as brand new ones! It left Early Access on December 15, 2022 on PC, with mobile ports planned.
The first game is available for free at the official site, while the second to fifth games and Universe are available on Steam.

This series of games has examples of:

  • Adorable Evil Minions: The chickens. Even more so with the chicks introduced in 4!
  • Alien Invasion: Alien chicken invasion. You must stop them and save Earth. In the second game, you must save the entire solar system.
  • Ambiguous Gender: Due to not being referred to with any gender pronouns and none of the games having voice acting, the narrator is a victim of this trope. The hero may or may not be this.note 
  • Animal Wrongs Group: The chickens are here to wipe out the human race in order to save the earthly chickens. Though that doesn't justify why they had to use the Egg Cannon to destroy Earth...
  • Aquatic Mook: Chickens in submarines appear the underwater planet Epsilon Thalassus.
  • Arbitrary Weapon Range: For whatever reason, the Laser Cannon from 4 onwards has limited reach.
  • Asteroids Monster: You fight an asteroid that splits into multiple asteroids in every 8th wave of a stage in 2. The supernova stage in 4 features supernova debris that split into two when destroyed.
    • Exaggerated in 4 with Chicken Multiplicity, where a boss splits into a Dual Boss that splits into Big Chickens that splits into Chickenauts splits into chickens and finally chicks.
      • Taken to its logical conclusion with Chicken Exponentiality in Universe, which uses bosses and Elite Mooks from 5.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Just the premise of the series, but the Utensil Poker in particular, which is subverted gameplay-wise as one of the strongest weapons in the series. Some weapons play it straight and made much worse on Universe:
    • Lightning Fryer lets you shoot out electricity! It's more of a mid-game weapon, unfortunately, and deals pitiful damage to pretty much everything on later stages and higher difficulties.
    • Plasma Rifle unleashes a stream of plasma that deals very heavy damage to the point it can One-Hit Kill chickens in just one shot, but overheats very fast even with manual firing.
    • Photon Swarm unleashes a rapid flurry of photon particles, but its damage output is awful. Averted in later updates for Universe, which improved its damage output and made it a homing weapon as well, making it excel at certain bosses.
    • Positron Stream attacks fast and has a wicked cool-looking bending purple laser reminiscent of the Plasma Laser from Raiden, but just like the Lightning Fryer, it becomes less effective on higher stages and difficulties, not to mention overheating quite fast.
  • Bait-and-Switch Boss: How the Chickenaut was introduced in the fourth game. After defeating it, the progress bar suddenly drops down to 3%, the camera pans back - revealing a much bigger boss - Super Chicken. Combined with Victory Fakeout, as the victory music plays afterward but then comes to a screeching halt where Super Chicken's roar is then heard.
  • BFG: The Satellites are fairly large compared to the ship, which would make them gigantic compared to a human.
  • Big Eater: The hero, ready to devour a universe of chickens. Every game starts with them readying to order a large all-chicken meal only to be interrupted by an incoming chicken threat, and ends with them stopping by the Space Burger to feast in peace.
  • Book Ends:
    • The first stage in 2 features paratrooping chickens for its 5th, 6th and 7th waves, and the last stage features the same paratrooping chickens on steroids, in other words, dropping very fast.
    • Sort of in 4; the second stage starts with "The Chicken Wobble" and so does the penultimate stage as well.
    • The Henterprise in 5 serves as the boss for the first stage, and final boss for 5.
  • Boss Rush: The name itself is parodied for "Weapons Rush" and "Satellite Rush" from the fourth. It's pretty much Boss Rush for the hero... for 150 Keys.
    • Completely played straight with Boss Rush missions in Universe, where you can fight every possible boss in the game, including bosses that (appropriately) appear only in non-chicken-blasting missions.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the PC version of Revenge of the Yolk, before the boss fight in the prologue, The Hero will tell the player how to control them using the keyboard or the mouse.
  • Character Customization: Present since 4, but Universe greatly expands how you can start missions, from having more or less than 3 lives, starting with different powerups, initial weapon level, and you can buy equipment that affects stats like the speed at which you move or how fast your weapons overheat.
  • Charge Meter: Absolver Beam introduced in Universe requires you to hold the fire button to release a charged laser, and when charged to max, deals devastating damage and removes enemy bullets.
  • Chicken Walker: Averted - the chicken have lots of chicken-based technology, pretty much everything one could think of except this one.
  • Color-Coded Characters: The weapon powerups are represented by the color of the present boxes, as of Universe:
  • Continuing is Painful: Getting a Game Over in any game before Ultimate Omelette will result in you losing all your missles.
  • Cowardly Mooks: Coward Chickens in Universe always try to avoid your line of sight, and let go a poop every time they get hit.
  • Dark Reprise: The game over themes for the third and fourth games. The first and second games instead use Losing Horns and the fifth game instead uses a snippet of the Henterprise theme.
  • Deadpan Snarker: The narrator and the hero in spades, though Hen Solo has shades of this.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: Magnetic Manipulator in Universe has the power to manipulate asteroids, ranging from protecting itself with an asteroid barrier ring to summoning a meteor shower attack.
  • Disc-One Nuke: Neutron Gun. Very good at one-shotting chickens early-game, even on Superstar Hero.
  • Doomsday Device: Every final boss from the second game onwards is this: the "Mother Hen Ship", the Yolk-Star, the Egg Cannon, and the Henterprise, with the Egg Cannon being the most pronounced in that particular role.
  • Downer Beginning:
    • The third game starts where the second game ended, subverting its happy ending as a new Doomsday Device is uncovered and the hero is teleported to the other end of the galaxy.
    • Repeated in four, which also leaves off just as the hero wins... Hen Solo flies out of a black hole and practically demands their help.
  • Dual Boss: The twin Infinity Chickens in 4. One of the boss fights in 5 has you fighting both Military Chicken and Party Chicken at the same time.
    Hero (after defeating both Military Chicken and Party Chicken): Two birds in one stone! Booyah!
    • In Universe, there are "Double Team" boss waves where you fight two normally separate bosses at the same time, with the difficulty varying based on the bosses that are picked to fight you. Bosses that normally require you to change your orientation away from upwards for the whole battle and final bosses from older games are excluded from the selection.
  • Dung Fu: What the chicks introduced in 4 attack you with. The Party Chicken in 5 attacks by being a party pooper in all directions.
    • Universe introduces Cowards Chickens that drop poop whenever they get hit, and occasionally Slob Chickens fire a ring of poop instead of dropping food on getting hit.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • The first game is full of these:
      • It is an Endless Game with very formulaic waves compared to later entries, with the only differences being asteroids alternating in different colors for every 10 waves, and the 4th and 5th waves, the chickens circle around Earth in the first 10 waves, while moving in random directions in the second 10 waves, and repeat and so on.
      • The Hero can only move left or right.
      • It only has one weapon. 2 onwards has the series adding new weapons on a constant basis.
      • There are no atomic power-ups, and gifts only upgraded your weapon.
      • The game lacks mouse support and can only be played with the keyboard.
    • The weapons in 2 look and function quite differently from 3 onwards, and the lack of the overheating mechanic. The waves are still formulaic, with the falling asteroid waves' movement directions changing and repeating for every 3 stages, and the 5th to 7th waves changing things up for each stage.
    • The first two games use Losing Horns for the game over screens instead of using original jingles.
  • Earth Is the Center of the Universe: The only planet the chickens are interested in conquering, at least up until Universe, is Earth. Everything else matters not.
  • Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The key purpose of the Egg Cannon in 4, which launches a moon-sized egg onto a planet fry the surface of the planet on impact, overheating the planet to the point it explodes... yeah. And your goal is make sure it does not do that to Earth.
  • Edible Ammunition: The eggs dropped by chickens (and anything else that throws eggs) crack into yolks when they hit the bottom of the screen. The Iron Chef in the Space Burger galaxy from 4 throws fruit at you.
    • The fifth game lets you do this by the virtue of the Corn Shotgun weapon, which shoots out corn pellets from your ship.
    • The Burgermeister 3000 in Universe runs on this, using burger buns to crush you, shooting sauces in the place of lasers, and outright cooking entire chickens into roasts and firing them at you.
  • Elite Mooks: The late level chickens. Special note goes to Chickenauts introduced in 4, Armored Chickens and Chick Gatling Guns introduced in 5, and Slob Chickens and Toxic Chickens in Universe.
  • Endless Game: The first game, unlike the later entries where the games stop at the 120-wave (110 in 2) limit.
  • Feather Flechettes: The Henterprise's key gimmick is dispersing giant black feathers that forces you to push away. When the Feathered Field levels from 4 are reintroduced in Universe, the game adds the Feather Brain boss, an oversized chick whose entire arsenal consist of giant feathers.
  • Final Boss Preview: The hero gets pushed back very hard into a wormhole by the Yolk-Star's lasers in 3, and the first thing the Egg Cannon does when you first see it in 4 is blowing up a moon-sized battle station.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: The player character in Universe is not the same one from the previous five games.
  • Gatling Good: The Microgun satellite is a minigun that has a spooling time. The Riddler introduced in 5 fires Hitscan bullets in a machine-gun like fashion.
  • Giant Enemy Crab: The Giant Robotic Space Crabs in 4. A completely redesigned Space Crab also appears in 5!
    Hero (on encountering Space Crab 2.0): You again?! Let's test those upgrades of yours!
  • Giant Mook: The Big Chickens. You get to fight up to three in the second game, four in the third game (which are reused for Chicken Multiplicity in the fourth game), and up to six in Universe.
  • Heroic Mime:
    • In the first game, the hero only speaks in the intro, when they are ordering from Space Burger.
    • In the second game, the hero doesn't speak at all, putting this trope into effect.
    • The player characternote  in Universe initially didn't speak at all. This is now averted with the 43.2 patch, where the player now says quotes during boss fights.
  • High-Speed Battle: The Comet Chase stage in 3. Universe introduces a giant comet boss that appears in the Comet Chase missions called Henlley's Comet, where the background scrolls in the direction of the boss.
  • Improbable Weapon User / Abnormal Ammo:
    • The Utensil Poker weapon introduced in 3 is basically just a bunch of forks poking chickens until they die. One of the unlockable options is a Foreshadowing of the final boss fight against the Yolk-Star where you get to use it and it's an unlockable in 4 and 5 along with 3's Vulcan Chaingun and Plasma Rifle.
    • The Chickens use eggs to kill you as well. Eggs.
    • The chicks from four use poop. Yes, seriously.
  • Instant Roast: Your weapons have killed an enemy. Is it a chicken? If yes, it will certainly drop chicken wings or an entire roast chicken on death. Even chicks may rarely drop chicken wings.
    • This is weaponised by the Burgermeister 3000 in Universe, when on low health it vacuums unfortunate chickens into entire roast chickens and fires them at you.
  • Interactive Narrator: While the narrator appeared in all the games, this trope doesn't come into effect until the third game.
    • In the third game, the narrator and the hero just keep bickering with each other throughout the cutscenes.
    • In the fourth and fifth games, they do it too, to similar funny levels.
  • The Lancer: As a Shout-Out to the page picture, "Hen Solo" from another galaxy acts as this to the hero. It's never determined whether he's human, chicken, something else entirely, or even what galaxy he's from.
  • Later-Installment Weirdness: The fourth game onward ditches the formulaic waves for its stages, and every wave has you fighting chickens in various movement and placement patterns. Asteroid waves are noticeably absent (with the exception of supernova debris in 4 and the ice rocks in 5) until Universe.
  • Lightning Gun / Shock and Awe: The Lightning Frier weapon and, to an extent, Plasma Rifle.
  • Mad Scientist: Universe introduces Dr. Beaker that runs on this trope, whose attacks range include scattering research notes (which you can shoot to burn them before they hit you) to throwing loads of potions that hinder your movement, overheat your ship immediately, leave behind poison clouds or just plain deadly on impact.
  • Matryoshka Object: Universe introduces the Egg Cannon Cannon Cannon Cannonade, a variant of the Egg Cannon that uses remixed attacks, and summon a smaller Egg Cannon for every phase you defeat, up to three. Even your player character lampshades they never heard of such a boss and the Egg Cannon doing this before!
    Player: Wait, this isn't canon!
  • Money Spider: Interstellar chickens drop not only power-ups in the form of presents for your ship to use and chicken meat for you to eat, but also coins. And from 4 onwards chickens may glow with a golden light, which drop keys that serve as currency for unlockables and the main currency for Universe.
  • Mook Mobile: The fourth game introduces chicks and chickens in UFOs, and the fifth game introduces chickens encased in spaceships called Armored Chickens.
  • More Dakka: You always need more powerups, even if your firepower is maxed: You keep it in reserve, since you lose firepower when you die. At later levels, a death can make the game unwinnable because you lost too much firepower.
    • In Universe, specific waves on very high difficulty percentages can have this on the enemy side, especially if the wave contains a lot of Chickenauts for example, so you can have 20+ Chickenauts on screen at once, shooting projectiles in every direction akin to what you would find in a Bullet Hell. But Hitbox Dissonance is averted in this game, so it's much easier to get hit and lose a life, or force you to use multiple missiles to deal with all the elite chickens.
  • Nerf Arm: If the Corn Shotgun in Universe overheats, instead of stopping, it will instead shoot out popcorn. The popcorn can still kill chickens, though less efficiently than usual.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: One hit from a projectile or touching an enemy fries your ship instantly.
  • Outrun the Fireball: In the fourth game, the hero lands in a star system which sun is about to explode into a supernova. The narrator suggests the hero to run into the sun's core as it creates a black hole upon the supernova explosion to cut the time needed to return to the Solar System.
  • Overheating: A mechanic of the series introduced in the third game, where firing your weapon too much will overheat your ship, preventing you from shooting for a short period of time until the cooldown wears off. Some weapons such as Ion Blaster and Corn Shotgun don't overheat fast, while others such as Laser Cannon and Plasma Rifle overheat in just 20-something rapid shots.
    • Universe has changed certain weapons that take advantage of the overheating mechanic in later updates, such as Vulcan Chaingun firing in increasingly random directions as heat level rises, and Boron Railgun's damage output being proportionate to heat level.
  • Piñata Enemy: Slob Chickens in Universe drop food when hit. Watch out for their poop rings, though!
  • Police Are Useless: With the solar system invaded by chickens and the hero struggling alone against them, the police force is still active - but its only contribution is to give them a speeding ticket.
  • Poisonous Person: Toxic Chickens in Universe leave behind a deadly cloud of gas when destroyed.
  • Post-Defeat Explosion Chain: Surprisingly mostly averted. Most of the bosses immediately explode as soon as they run out of health. The only boss that plays this straight when defeated is the Henterprise.
  • The Power of Rock: This is Thundercluck's specialty in Universe, using musical notes and guitar sounds as projectiles to attack you while playing a guitar that fires lasers.
  • Proj-egg-tile: The favored weapon of every Chicken. How are they lethal to spaceships is anybody's guess, but the games often brush it off by the hero being fairly proud. Though the fourth game attempts to justify how eggs could be so lethal by saying they congeal to and fry whatever they hit when exposed to solar radiation.
    • Some of the chicken-made machines fire eggs as well, such as the Egg Ships in 3 and the Chick Gatling Guns in 5.
  • Recurring Boss:
    • The medium-sized soldier chickens, Big Chickens, and the Mother-hen Ship in 2.
    • The Big Chickens and UCOs in 3, as well as a Big Chicken that looks like it is dressed for winter.
    • The Space Crabs in 4.
    Hero: Is that thing following me?
    • The Henterprise in 5.
  • Recurring Boss Template: The second and third games has you fighting the Big Chickens at some points. The third and fourth games feature some kind of mechanical boss that appears at some stages, the UFO-shaped... Unidentified Chicken Objects (UCO) for 3 and the Space Crabs for 4.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Henterprise from the fifth game has a black-and-red color scheme.
  • Refused the Call: The hero tries this a bit in 4, but to no use.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Your ship and the chickens... look very huge compared to Earth. And let's not get started on everything else in Universe...
  • Shielded Core Boss: The Mother-hen Ship in 4 requires you to dismantle its egg shell to shoot its yolk core. Ditto for the Supernova Core, where you have to destroy its barriers to attack its... apple core center. Peeling off all of the egg shell for the former and defeating the latter without destroying all of its barriers drop three additional satellites.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The Yolk-Star in 3. No prizes for what it is based on. If you don't get the clue, say "Hen Solo" from 4 out loud. In case you don't get the picture, there's the Henperor's Apprentice in 5.
    • One of the stages in 4 (aptly called Retro Galaxy) has you shooting enemies made out of pixels (and move like as if they are in an 8-bit arcade game!) that are expies of the aliens in Space Invaders, and one of its wave variants have you shooting ships that resemble the player ship from Galaga.
      • On the topic of Space Invaders, Universe introduces a wave called Tribute that plays out like one, complete with barriers at the bottom of the screen and a UFO passing by.
    • The Henterprise in 5. Sounds familiar?
    • The Squawk Block missions in Universe end in a battle against one of the boss chickens: one that shoots lasers in different directions, and the other drops a lot of eggs. Aptly, they are named Master Squawker and Crazy Squawker respectively.
    • The Magnetic Manipulator boss in Universe is a chicken Expy of Magneto.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: In the second game, the chickens get more powerful the deeper into the solar system you go. In the third game it's arbitrary, with the chickens getting stronger and stronger along the haphazard way you happen to be taking.
  • Starfish Language: Cluck?
  • Starter Equipment: You'll always start with the Ion Blaster in the first to third games, Boron Railgun in 4, and Hypergun in 5.
    • Universe has you start with Moron Railgun, an inferior version of Boron Railgun. The game even tells you to buy another weapon to replace it once you have enough keys to do so.
  • Suddenly Voiced: After only having a few lines in the intro of first game and being completely silent in the second game, this trope is applied to the hero in the third game onward. In the fourth game onwards, they start speaking in-game.note 
    • While the player character in Universe was initially silent, the 43.2 patch now has them comment during missions, and even appears to be more talkative than the hero from the episodic games.
  • Superman Substitute: Super Chicken, the first boss of the fourth game, and its Dual Boss counterpart Infinity Chickens. As the "Show Them Who's Boss!" wave title in 4 was already taken by the Big Chickens in Universe, the new wave title for it gives a Shout-Out in the form of "It's a bird! It's a plane!".note 
  • Support Party Member: Universe introduces enemies which attacks won't destroy your ship, instead making your life harder and more susceptible to other enemies' attacks, such as Alchemist Chickens hurling potions that leave behind a cloud that slows your ship's movement and Phoenix Chickens which fireballs causes your ship to overheat immediately on contact regardless of heat level.
  • Tactical Suicide Boss: The living supernova core Bossa Nova, which appears at the end of Supernova missions in Universe, is protected by a ring of rotating supernova debris that can be pushed to reach it. It uses the supernova debris to either crush you, attack you with the debris from the bottom of the screen one by one, or extend its rings all the way to the other side of the screen to trap you, where it is vulnerable to your attacks.
    • This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Rapid-firing weapons such as Boron Railgun, Photon Swarm and Riddler aren't too useful due to their low damage per shot, but their rapid firing rate means that the supernova debris will be pushed back even more further, allowing you to hit the boss's core pretty easily. Same applies with the Henterprise's feather attack, with those weapons able to easily push them away where stronger but slower-firing weapons struggle more.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: The Hero and their love of chicken foods. Nothing motivates them to action than the thought of chicken foods disappearing from the universe.
    Hen Solo: The world is going to be destroyed by the chickens!
    Hero: I just got through saving the Earth once.
    Hen Solo: The fate of all Chicken Burgers are at stake!
    Hero: WHAT!? Why didn't you tell me things were that serious?
  • Turns Red: The middle waves for the Earth stage in 2 feature chickens that move erratically after getting hit. Universe reintroduces these berserk enemies in the form of orange ruffled chicks, as well as a variant of bandana chicks that immediately go after your ship.
  • Unstable Equilibrium: Getting hit costs you a significant amount of firepower, meaning that defeating enemies will take longer and you're more likely to get hit again.
  • Updated Re Release: The first game received one in 2023, allowing it to be properly run on modern computers, as well as including in-game music.
  • Vader Breath: The Henperor's Apprentice in 5 signals its arrival with this.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: The Henterprise always starts off its boss battles with this.

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