Your curve $C$ has genus $0$, not $3$. One can see it isomorphic to $\mathbb{A}^1$ via the projection
\begin{align*}
C &\to \mathbb{A}^1\\
(x,y) &\mapsto x
\end{align*}
which has inverse
\begin{align*}
\mathbb{A}^1 &\to C\\
x &\mapsto (x, x^4 - 1) \, .
\end{align*}
Similarly, the projective closure $\overline{C}$ of $C$ is birational to $\mathbb{P}^1$ via
\begin{align*}
\overline{C} &\mapsto \mathbb{P}^1\\
[X:Y:Z] &\mapsto [X:Z]
\end{align*}
and
\begin{align*}
\mathbb{P}^1 &\to \overline{C}\\
[S:T] &\mapsto [ST^3 : S^4 - T^4 : T^4] \, .
\end{align*}
The problem with your computation is that the genus-degree formula applies to nonsingular projective plane curves, and $\overline{C}$ has a singular point at infinity, which we can see as follows. Homogenizing, we have that the projective curve $\overline{C}$ is given by the vanishing of the polynomial $F := YZ^3 - X^4 + Z^4$, and the partials $F_X = -4X^3$, $F_Y = Z^3$, $F_Z = 3YZ^2 + 4Z^3$ all vanish at the point $[0:1:0]$, so this is a singular point of the curve.