COCK: Call of Chicken Killing

I had recently become a dad. At work, another coworker who had also just had a baby and I were comparing notes on newborn stress. A third coworker walked into the break room and offered a piece of advice neither of us was expecting: “You should buy your kids an axe.”

I asked why. “No idea,” he said, and walked off. It became an office meme, and my daughter now owns a toy axe. The same coworker is very into guns and only eats chicken. Somewhere in that combination, the idea for Call of Chicken Killing became inevitable. The acronym may be a little forced. I can live with that.

The plan was a quick AI-assisted prototype, a few games with coworkers, and then back to normal life. We enjoyed it far too much. I kept adding things, and the throwaway joke grew into a game with a full campaign, multiplayer, bosses, progression and its own collection of terrible achievement names.

Story mode is the heart of COCK and where roughly 80% of my development time went. Start on the fourth floor, fight waves of mecha-chickens, finish the local missions and earn your way downstairs. You can go alone or bring up to three friends.

The building is a recreation of the one where I work. The floor plan, office layout and desks follow the real place, while the missions turn its people and everyday details into something considerably less normal.

Each floor has a mainframe for weapons, ammunition and upgrades. Earn Pepitos during the match and decide what to buy. Firearms, grenades and your regular axe handle the everyday problems; by default, every 50 chicken kills charges the Supreme Axe, whose shockwave clears ordinary chickens in its path.

The atmosphere changes as the waves progress: daylight gives way to sunset, then night, with office lights gradually turning on and circuits starting to flicker. Side missions, bosses and personal Easter eggs give you reasons to explore between attacks.

Join a public match or create a private room and share its link or invite code. Nobody in the squad needs to run a server: the squad leader controls the lobby, and leadership passes on if they leave.

Built-in proximity voice chat lets you hear nearby teammates in the world. Allow microphone access and use T to toggle your microphone. The game is designed for a desktop browser with mouse and keyboard; phones and tablets are not supported.

Customize your operator and loadout, choose your axe and equip four favorite emotes. The catalogue includes 15 gestures and 35 dances, from a wave or applause to the Robot, Running Man and breakdance. Six are available from the start; the other 44 can be unlocked in the shop.

Press B to open the four-slot emote wheel, then choose with W A S D or the arrow keys. Your operator performs in third person so you can enjoy the animation too. Emotes work in the lobby and during matches, including PvP; moving or taking action brings you back to the fight.

Cosmetic axes and emotes use golden eggs, earned through online Story milestones. They stay in your wallet between matches. Pepitos are separate: they pay for doors, upgrades and drinks during a run. There are no microtransactions. Play, earn eggs, unlock something ridiculous.

Sign in to earn and keep achievements in solo Story or co-op. Chicken kill milestones accumulate across Story runs; paintings and drinks need to be collected in a single run. The boss achievement is shared by the squad. Guest play is available, but achievements require an account.

I started the prototype with GPT-6 Astra. AI helped create environments from real photos and references, along with the mecha-chickens and super chickens. Gameplay and emote animations come from Mixamo's free library. The client renders the world with Three.js.

A prototype that runs is only the beginning. My first attempt with an AI-written backend lagged at around twenty chickens. I wrote the authoritative Node.js game server, reused code from earlier projects and tuned the game loop myself. Firebase handles sign-in, and MySQL stores persistent account data.

I also built editors inside the engine: tools to adjust weapon firing points, furnish rooms and place mainframes and mission stations directly in the world. Seeing a change in context beats guessing coordinates in a data file.

That is what made this project stick. It gave me a reason to turn an absurd idea into something my friends and coworkers could actually play, while filling it with the places, people, cats and references that make it mine.