Chickenhare and the Treasure of Spiking-Beard Review

A licensed platformer with a real treasure hunt hiding inside it

Chickenhare and the Treasure of Spiking-Beard, developed by N-Zone and published by Nzone Production, released 14 October 2025 at NZ$49.95, brings the comic books and animated films' trio of unlikely heroes into a 3D platformer built in the mould of Crash Bandicoot. Chickenhare glides on oversized ears to cross gaps, Abe the tortoise smashes through obstacles with his shell, and Meg the skunk handles combat with martial arts, and players switch freely between all three as each level demands. What sets the game apart from a standard licensed platformer, and what its small but detailed 14-review Positive sample keeps returning to, is a genuine real-world treasure hunt tied into the game's in-fiction one, a hook more than one reviewer says they haven't seen paired with a platformer before and found genuinely exciting.

The character-swap platforming itself draws consistent, specific praise. Reviewers describe well-balanced traversal between the three heroes, with hand-crafted worlds they call diverse and pleasant to explore, and several single out the boss encounters and level design as standout moments. More than one reviewer frames the game as ideal for short sessions and handheld play, specifically praising how well it runs and controls on Steam Deck, with one describing it as having kept them occupied across several long flights. For buyers who grew up with the source material, or who remember the era of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro-style collectathon platformers, several reviewers describe the game as scratching that specific nostalgic itch directly, with one player buying on impulse purely because they liked the original books and films and coming away satisfied with the result.

That said, a real cluster of technical and design complaints cuts against the warmer reception. Combat draws the sharpest and most specific criticism in the sample: one detailed reviewer calls it simplistic and "topornoye" (clunky), pointing to one-button fighting, input lag that can appear seemingly out of nowhere mid-fight, and environments they describe as often too dark to clearly spot traps. That same reviewer also flags visible texture pop-in during cutscenes, attributing the rough presentation to the studio's evident inexperience with Unreal Engine 5, a specific and technically grounded complaint rather than a vague dismissal. A separate reviewer echoes the presentation concerns from a different angle, describing the game as feeling unpolished overall and specifically noting the absence of voice acting, calling the sound design underdeveloped for a game built around a licensed cast of characters players are meant to grow attached to.

Price is the other recurring sticking point. At NZ$49.95, several reviewers explicitly weigh the cost against what they feel the game delivers, with one blunt but representative review calling it "kinda a generic platformer" that "doesn't really shine in any aspect" relative to its asking price, despite acknowledging the evident effort behind it. That complaint sits in tension with reviewers who found real value in the game's length for completionists: one detailed review estimates a five-hour linear main story that extends to as much as thirty hours for players chasing every achievement and every secret tied to the treasure-hunt conceit, a length calculation that changes considerably depending on how much a given buyer values full completion over a straightforward playthrough.

It's worth noting how unusually small and how unusually international this review sample is for a licensed platformer at this price point -- reviews arrive in English, French, and Russian in roughly equal measure, reflecting the broader European reach of the Chickenhare comics the game is adapting. That spread works in the sample's favour for authenticity, since the specific, sometimes highly technical complaints (Unreal Engine texture streaming, input lag mechanics, sound mixing) read as the kind of detail only an engaged, attentive player base produces, rather than a thin scattering of copy-paste impressions. It does mean, though, that prospective buyers have less independent verification to lean on than they would for a more widely reviewed platformer, and should weigh that thinner evidence base accordingly.

It's also worth putting the game's three-character structure in a slightly more critical light than the warmest reviews give it, since at least one reviewer raises a genuinely interesting counterpoint: rather than adding depth, having three heroes on hand can read as compensating for the fact that no single one of them, on their own, offers enough mechanical variety to carry a full platformer. That's a different kind of criticism than the technical complaints about combat and presentation, since it targets the game's core design premise rather than its execution, and it's worth taking seriously precisely because it comes from a reviewer who still recommends the game overall rather than someone dismissing it outright. Whether that reads as a fair critique or an uncharitable one likely depends on how a given player feels about the genre's classic three-in-one structure elsewhere, in games like The Lost Vikings, which more than one reviewer cites as a direct point of comparison, for better and for worse.

Taken as a whole, Chickenhare and the Treasure of Spiking-Beard is a platformer with real, specific charm, built around a genuinely novel treasure-hunt hook and a well-liked trio of switchable heroes, that stumbles on the technical fundamentals reviewers expect from a modern 3D platformer. Fans of the source material or families looking for an easy, relaxed collectathon will likely find real value here, especially on sale, but the clunky combat, dated presentation, and thin sound design are specific enough, and consistent enough across an admittedly small sample, that this isn't a game to buy at full price expecting genre-leading polish.