It’s April Fools’ Day, and aside from being a living nightmare for journalists around the world, it’s also an opportunity for game developers to put out some very silly stuff. This year it seems PUBG Corp has taken up the gauntlet, releasing an arcade-style minigame for PUBG where you fight chickens. And it’s called POBG (short for Playeromnomnom’s Battlegrounds) – although that doesn’t exactly solve the debate on how to pronounce the acronym. I’m going with pob-guh.
The minigame can be accessed through PUBG’s main menu, where it appears as a little arcade cabinet. POBG is based on a pixel art version of PUBG maps (inspired by the work of artist Alexey “Gas13” Garkushin). Having played it for a couple of levels, I have to say, it’s a surprisingly high-quality April fool. Players must shoot their way through “rooms” full of chickens, who parachute from the sky and immediately start firing semi-automatics in your general direction. (The choice of chickens is a reference to what happens when you win a regular PUBG game, which gives you the famous message “winner winner chicken dinner”.) You can pick up ammo, health and different weapons along the way, and find cover behind various crates and pieces of debris. Once you’ve cleared a stage, you can also acquire various bonus abilities to help you collect some chicken dinners.
If you’re wondering exactly what this looks like, you can find a quick demonstration of how POBG plays in the video above. Apparently this minigame is actually rather extended, with later stages taking place on other PUBG maps like Vikendi, and even some boss fights with overgrown chickens. I’ll probably need a little more practice to earn my wings.
