Mirage Tracker

The next time somebody tells you that smartphones are stressful, show them Chicky Pop. 

Released last month on iOS and now available on Android, Chicky Pop is the kind of game that lowers your blood pressure while flooding your brain with sweet, sweet dopamine.

Don’t get us wrong. Beneath the game’s cuddly surface lies a core of testing tactical gameplay.

But its cuddly surface is really very cuddly indeed. 

For one thing, it features a cast of beaming, pastel-hued chicks, all heaped under a smiling sun. For another, the goal is to drop additional chicks onto this heap until you create the Easter Bunny—i.e., a chick with rabbit ears. 

Developer Studio 67 describes Chicky Pop as a “minimal merge drop puzzle game”, and that pretty much covers all the bases.

To play, all you need to do is slide your finger along the top of the screen before letting go to drop another chick on the pile. 

Whenever two identical chicks come into contact, they merge to become a larger chick. Merge two of these larger chicks and you’ll make an even larger chick, and so on until you’re staring into the blissed-out face of an Easter Bunny chick. 

If, on the other hand, you fail to merge enough chicks the pile will reach the line at the top of the screen and it’s game over. 

While casual is definitely the name of the game, Chicky Pop sounds simpler than it is. 

For instance, before dropping each chick you need to weigh up whether to go for a quick win or build towards a more lucrative chain reaction, creating multiple merges in a single stroke and unleashing a torrent of bonus points. 

But every time you drop a chick onto the pile it jostles the other chicks around it, potentially upsetting your carefully constructed chain reaction plans and placing the Easter Bunny out of your reach. 

Until next time.

Chicky Pop is available for free right now on the App Store and the Google Play Store.