Choosing to use a video game as a vehicle for some pointed purpose always feels like a bit of an odd direction to take. Even if it would be a cause I’m invested in, I’m not sure that gameplay or some sort of in-game messaging would serve to reinforce how I feel about it, and of course if it were some topic I wasn’t interested in or would disagree with I’d doubt playing through would be able to sway my opinion. Nonetheless, that appears to at least be part of the goal of Saborus, which may couch the message by trying to be clever, but still manages to feel a little heavy-handed in its opinion on the meat industry.

Sold as a sort of horror simulation, where you’ll play the part of a chicken trying to make a break for it before being turned into an entree, there is at least some potential in the concept. If handled with some humor and playing out in a more over-the-top manner, working with the perspective of the chicken and making workers into exaggerated monsters, it may have had potential. Unfortunately, it instead plays it almost entirely straight, putting the weight of expectations squarely on what amounts to a puzzle platformer escape room of sorts.

Overall, I’d say at best you could call the results a mixed bag, but more often than not it feels like a collection of ideas that were never fully developed. The first thing I had issues with was the fact that while it looks like you’re in a large factory space, with any number of ways you could try to escape, it’s immediately clear that you’ll only be able to go in whatever direction the developers had in mind. If you were thinking you could go over or under something to get away you’ll quickly find yourself running into many invisible walls. So sometimes you’ll simply need to run around until you find the way that you’re allowed to proceed, and that all feels sloppily implemented. As you proceed it doesn’t improve much, as you’ll find yourself running through some large spaces that tend to feel very empty, being forced to look for some object flashing in the distance to be told what you need to do, rather than it being at all intuitive. Add in platforming that is plagued by issues with hitboxes that don’t always match the geometry, and surfaces that sometimes feel weirdly slippery, and it can be plain aggravating.

Put it all together, and while there seems to be an idea here that had some effort invested in realizing it, the final product simply struggles more often than it soars. Whatever novelty there is in controlling a chicken is quickly lost, you’ll spend far too much time on the load screen whose message feels a little too preachy, and there just doesn’t seem to be any real element of consistent fun to speak of. You may still choose to experience it, but it really struggles to deliver on being entertainment and likely won’t succeed in changing any hearts or minds either.