Billy Hatcher is a 3D platform game whose gameplay revolves around growing and hatching eggs to defeat the Crows.

The player controls Billy, who cannot do much by himself aside from moving and jumping, but his abilities greatly expand while holding an egg.

Billy can perform a rooster call to hatch fully matured eggs, which can hold contents such as helper animals, hats, and items.

In such cases, the egg will disappear from its position after several seconds of inactivity and will appear back at its nest at its smallest size.

Every mission completed awards an 'Emblem of Courage', crucial to obtaining the Legendary Chicken Suit that Billy needs for the last battle against the story's final boss, Dark Raven.

While the Sonic the Hedgehog games use speed as a major factor in determining letter grading for completed stages, speed is less of a factor in mission grading for Billy Hatcher, which also takes into account combat performance, including longest attack combos performed with the same egg.

Upon arrival, Bantam tells Billy he is late, showing him a pocket watch in the shape of an egg.

Uri-Uri, the Chicken Elder of Pirates Island, reveals that Dark Raven is reborn every 100 years to try to bring eternal night.

Billy finally defeats Ultimate Raven as his heart explodes, completely ending his existence and return.

They get his attention by laughing at him and he runs over to them joining the laughter, thus ending the game with a chicken feather slowly falling from the sky.

The GameCube was chosen for development over the competing PlayStation 2 and Xbox because of its wide audience that Naka felt would appreciate such a family-friendly game.

[5] Electronic musician Yukari Fresh composed the game's main theme song, "Chant this Charm".

[11] Critics praised the visuals and music, gameplay style, presentation and multiplayer mode, while citing issues with the physics, camera, and a simple plot.

[21] In December 2022, Sonic Team designer Shun Nakamura stated that he'd like to make a sequel for the game.