It’s been a weirdly plentiful year for games where you play as bird cops. That sounds like an incredibly specific niche, but just a few months after Duck Detective: The Secret Salami stole the internet’s collective heart, we’ve got another avian agent who is, begrudgingly, returning to his black-and-white spotlight. Chicken Police: Into the Hive! is the second game in the Chicken Police series, following grizzled detective Sonny Featherland in the follow-up to the 2020 hit noir point-and-click visual novel, Chicken Police: Paint it Red!.
Desperate to forget the horrors he saw taking down the Wessler crime empire during the first game, Sonny is packing up to leave Clawville when, just like last time, another desperate woman sneaks into his office under cover of night to urgently ask him for help. Millandra Mantodea is an insect from The Hive, the city’s squalid ghetto for its underserved bug population, and her husband’s dead body has just been stolen from his freshly-dug grave. And while he’s only one of several corpses that’ve gone missing, this sudden spree of body-snatching is only but one of the major disturbances happening in The Hive.
Chicken Police Doesn’t Chicken Out On Telling Ugly Truths
Chicken Police isn’t subtle about holding a mirror up to society, and Into the Hive picks up that dreadfully heavy ball right where Paint it Red left off, putting its foot on the gas immediately and never once letting up. The powder keg of a situation in The Hive has only worsened since the crumbling of the Wessler crime syndicate in the last game, with various other gangs running rampant without Wessler to keep them in check and the deeply unsettling New Unity Church seeming a little too good to be true in their sudden charity. Millandra knowingly risks her life to ask Sonny for help – Clawville’s citizens, its upper crust, and the city’s police force that protects only them don’t care what’s going on inside The Hive, and the Chicken Police are her last hope.
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Chicken Police: Into The Hive PAX East Preview – It’s Cluckin’ Good
The weirder the mystery visual novel, the more I like it, so I’m ready to fall in love with maybe the silliest (and best) of them all.
Developers The Wild Gentlemen were always going to need a hearty scoop of style to help players swallow a pill as bitter as allegorical racial tensions in a critically unequal society, especially with such a ridiculous concept on the surface. But style is where the Chicken Police series shines brightest. If you loved the things that made Paint it Red feel unique in a genre where standing out can be tough, the visual novel’s much-awaited sequel somehow has even more pizzazz than the first.
Early on, you’ll decide if you’d like to play the game in its intended black and white grainy film style, or if richer, smoother color is more your speed. I opted primarily for color this time around, and I found that it added intricate depth to the beautifully ugly world of Clawville, but the menu says the black and white version is the way the game is meant to be played. You can alternate between them at will, and I had fun desaturating the game during its darker moments, relegating color for livelier ones, which were fewer and further between.
Regardless of the color palette you choose, Into the Hive oozes flair throughout each scene, handling dark subjects with just the humor and grace required to do so. The characters, despite being non-human, are some of the most human-feeling in the visual novel, carrying tropes of their species as interesting personality traits in ways that make you feel for them enough that you sometimes forget they’re animals. I’m a firm bug hater in real life, yet I found myself emotional at the thought of a mother selling her larvae for the city’s elite to feast on so she could afford bills for the month.
Strike A Balance Of Good Cop, Neutral Cop, Bad Cop, Chicken Cop
The talks you’ll have with each character, whether casual conversations or actual police interrogations, all have long-lasting, branching consequences. Additionally, the tone you use to convey your message, amusingly indicated by smiley face scribbles on each response, is just as crucial as the words you say. Some of the order of operations in certain scenes can be a little convoluted, requiring specific clues before you can proceed (especially when it comes to the optional bonus goals that are tangential to your investigation), but they’re no more frustrating than in other visual novels.
Once you’ve got everything you need to talk to a character, you’ll need to carefully balance how you approach your style of police work, with different folks responding best to different kinds of strategies. You’ll need to interrogate plenty of characters along the way, and what works with some might not work with others, so it’s up to you to figure out how to make all these birdies sing.
Something I particularly loved was that on certain characters’ dialogue screens, you’ll notice a series of scribbles and notes indicating how Sonny feels about each one. You’ll see exes through the eyes of the rival detective and notes about who makes the best coffee, giving extra flavor to each series of dialogue chains. Not only do the art quirks help build the world, but the excellent voice acting adds dashes of flavor everywhere, making each animal feel more human when you can hear the emotion in their lines.
Along with the visual updates in Into the Hive, you’ll also enjoy a number of side-quests and minigames as you work to solve the overarching mystery. Sit down at Zipp’s Cafe with the old man who runs the newspaper to play Clawville Wildcards, a card game asking you to overtake your opponents in something of an upgraded tic-tac-toe. Head off on extra leads, completing goals and learning more about the characters logged in your codex. Keep your eyes peeled in each chapter for a limited-time selection of collectible pinup model calendar sheets – they’re collectibles, and there’s an achievement for finding all 12. Even outside of the primary draw of the game, you’ll find little things along the way to breathe an extra sense of life into an otherwise dull and dreary city.
With a grim mystery, vividly violent world, interesting side quests and minigames, impressively real animal characters, and multiple endings to experience, you’ll struggle to put Into the Hive down once you pick it up. The story of Into the Hive is fresh enough to stand on its own, but with endless ties back to the first game between characters and references, the experience of playing both weaves together a horrifically beautiful story of inequality, crime, and style that sticks with you long past the ending.
- Released
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November 7, 2024
- Developer(s)
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The Wild Gentlemen
- Publisher(s)
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Joystick Ventures
- ESRB
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M for Mature – Blood, Drug Reference, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence
- Prequel(s)
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Chicken Police: Paint It Red
- Steam Deck Compatibility
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Unknown
- PC Release Date
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November 7, 2024
- Retains the heart of the original while adding its own stylish UI upgrades.
- Rich storytelling and tactful handling of somewhat delicate topics.
- Emotional realism from non-human characters and stellar voice acting.
- Fun side missions like extra goals, minigames, and collections.
- Even as a pun-lover, some of the puns get a little corny after a while.
- Certain goals can be a bit convoluted, especially goals that aren?t required.