Pixelante Games, the Vancouver-based group of independent developers, want to make you laugh at all the dick jokes in their new game Fowl Space, or at least it shows that they cracked themselves up while creating the title. And I think there’s something to be said for developers who enjoyeds creating the product they release, because the enjoyment definitely shows in the finished product.

Fowl Space is about an Astronaut Chicken (who Eddy Walters, one of the game designers, lovingly dubbed “Astro Cock”) that must battle hoards of Vikings (obviously a clichéd plot). The game uses a beautiful art style that is set in a quirky, silhouetted world. The chicken has a bubble for a helmet and a giant gun strapped to its back. The gun blasts shots of white goo, which I already overheard being called “spunk,” that takes down the enemies in the game. Did I mention there are a lot of dick jokes in the game?

The game was conceived during a particularly grueling summer class up at Simon Fraser University where “Astro Cock” was born in doodles. For the two years thereafter, the team worked on the game at various points for around six months of actual development and the game that was shown off as part of the PAX 10 was born. And with representatives from several of the major digital distribution portals dropping in on them, the young team was getting extremely excited about the game’s future.

The game is built in flash, due to the vast experience of Evan Miller, who is best known for his his free flash game Hunted Forever. They decided on a silohuetted look because of its practicality, but it also makes for a more stylized appearance. The chicken can gather additional weapons, charge the gun for a bigger blast of white-attack and even unlock hats around the game world to wear on top of its space helmet. The team made sure to point at that not only can the chicken wear hats, it can also stack hats so by late in the game you’re wearing an entire tower on top of your head. A nice touch for an already quirky game. College students know what works.

As far as the bad guys in the game, they are all vikings. They start of small and mean and then later in the game progress to machine driving behemoths that are more difficult to take down. As you kill vikings, they’ll drop women’s underwear and lingerie (obviously) from which you start building up your high score. The game is also full of tongue-in cheek pop-culture references, from LOLcats to Dinosaur Comics to Splash Attack. The team likes comedy and it shows.

The game is about a month or two away from full-optimization, and since they’re currently talking to reps from different outlets we don’t have a final platform or release date yet.

For more about Pixelante Studios check out their website.