Have you ever looked at or heard something and gone what the cluck or some other variation of that phrase? Very rarely have we looked at a game and gone what is going on/what inspired this. At PAX West 2023, we met with The Wild Gentlemen to preview their upcoming game Chicken Police: Into the Hive.
At the time, the game looked like an interesting noir-themed game that utilized some furry and feathery companions as the main characters. In the dark and distressed world of Clawville where things aren’t quite what they seem, the Chicken Police must avoid painting the town red again and solve an unusual mystery. Why does a body get stolen after death?
What is M.E.A.T. and why are people disappearing? With an unusual mystery afoot, the Chicken Police Sonny Featherland and Marty MacChicken are on the case and will uncover what the cluck is happening with your help. Come on a wild ride where feathers will get ruffled and you are the lead investigator deciding who might be the evil mastermind; play it friendly or scare the truth out of them. Let’s unravel our thoughts on this noir game in our Chicken Police: Into the Hive review.
Developer: The Wild Gentlemen
Publisher: Joystick Ventures
Platforms: PC, coming later to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, & Xbox Series X|S
Release Date: November 7th, 2024
Players: 1
Price: Base: $24.99 USD
The game starts with Sonny revisiting a familiar scene, a murder scene where a case from his past is haunting his nightmares. This is where the player first learns how to investigate the scene and look for clues. Fully in color, the player must examine the evidence and determine who killed the bug. With the help of a forensic scientist, Sonny is able to come up with an idea of how the murder went down. After waking from the nightmare, Sonny is approached by a mysterious woman who has stated that her husband has gone missing and is dead.
Confused by the phrasing, Sonny uncovers that the woman’s husband had died and then went missing. This missing body sends the Chicken Police down a dark rabbit hole into an on-fire hen house. With a city on edge, citizens starving, bodies disappearing, a mysterious cult emerging, and a criminal enterprise running the Hive, the famous chicken police have their work cut out for them.
After the introduction to the mystery at hand, we then pick up where we started with the PAX West 2023 demo portion of the story. Without having to rush through, I could finally examine and thoroughly enjoy the visual artwork the developers had created; the game can be played either in a normal colorful mode or in noir mode.
With the game’s art direction and musical composition, the noir setting felt more appropriate to the mystery at hand. With a dark undertone, a city in distress, and suffering the citizens, the noir style gives the characters more of a dystopian but relatable feel; while in color, you easily pick up the humanoid features of each animal and start question why they have human hands and arm rather than focusing on their more primal nature.
The characters within Chicken Police: Into the Hive each have their own unique feel with each having their own secrets, mannerisms, and personal motivations. Who truly runs the city and why has a major portion of it been segregated? What is the royal family doing to rectify the situation and is there anything that can be down to help Clawville’s citizens?
These are just some of the key questions that you must think about and solve while playing Chicken Police: Into the Hive. As a new clue emerges, you must connect the dots to solve the problem at hand. Sometimes citizens will make requests and you will have to figure out how to undertake their requests.
While investigating a scene, the player must look for all clues possible before they can leave the area; this in itself sounds fairly simple, but, it is not always an easy task. Sometimes, this requires the player to search or interact with the same area multiple times! Sometimes, a clue may be found, but you will have to connect the dots or interact with another individual before you can return to that certain spot.
The game does an okay job at giving context clues as to what needs to be done, but doesn’t help the player when they get stuck; it is fairly easy to be stuck on a certain part of the investigation for a few minutes all the way up to an hour based on not interacting with things in an appropriate manner. The game needs a hint or help system so that average players can figure out what needs to be done. At the end of the chapter, the player is forced to put the clues together and tie the key players to each clue.
The game has a wide variety of mini-games that you get to experience, however, you get to experience most of them only once. Having a separate game mode or the ability to go back to play them without having to replay the story would make them more impactful. Additionally, the game has a shooting range feature with three types of weapons, however, at no point does the player get to draw their gun.
The game does have multiple endings; out of the two I encountered, the first felt unsatisfying with a curveball thrown into the ending that made me feel like I did something wrong. The second made me feel like the developers were putting a bandaid on a stab wound; multiple things felt unresolved and despite getting the girl, I still wondered what the cluck I could have done better.
Chicken Police: Into the Hive has very few customizable settings. The key setting is the ability to switch between noir and colored mode. The game also features subtitles, the ability to change the cursor speed and to turn on auto-play so that the game feels more like a play rather than a visual novel. The game has twelve written language settings including Polish, English, Spanish, French, Russian, and German. For video settings, the game has a chromatic aberration and film grain feature. For audio, the player can adjust the master volume, music, sound effects, UI effects, voiceover, and cinematics volume.
The game features a few extras including an art gallery, collectibles, achievements, and the World of Wilderness. The art gallery features some of the key art in the game game as well as concept designs. The collectibles showcase different calendar art that can be found throughout the world; the pin-up style art is a mixture of elegance but hints at the Femme fatale. The World of Wilderness is a fun way of tying other Wild Gentleman games together both former and future.
At the end of the day, Chicken Police: Into the Hive is a fairly good visual novel with a dark but enjoyable noir setting. The story can keep you on the edge of your seat not knowing what to expect and who might be a fair-weathered friend or a clucking foe. The game features quite a few optional quests that expand the relationship of Sunny and Marty with the other key characters but completing them is no easy task.
Most of these quests aren’t required to complete the story but do enrich it and the characters within. The ending does leave us wanting more from the Chicken Police universe, however, the two endings I got, make us question if there is a way to save one of the characters I love or if it is a Fixed point.
Outside of the game’s story, the ability to switch between the different visual styles makes each play-through feel like a different experience. The game struggles with two aspects; the first key aspect is a lack of direction in how to complete certain challenges or investigate aspects. The lesser problem is the controller sensitivity.
Despite having controller support, the game is much easier using a mouse and keyboard; the cursor’s movement on the controller is much slower than just using a mouse. Yes, you can change the speed but it still feels fairly slow. The game does have some changeable settings but it feels like it is lacking compared to other visual novels or other games.
In the end, Chicken Police: Into the Hive is a thrilling sequel to Chicken Police: Paint it Red. If you play the game without playing the original, there are some key moments referenced that will leave you feeling confused, however, the game does a decent enough job quickly glancing over it to not take you out of the overall experience.
I may have had fun with Chicken Police: Into the Hive, but the game’s sound direction made it feel a lot longer than the nine hours it took to beat it on the first run. If you’re craving a noir-style game, then it is worth picking up. However, if you are on the fence, it might be worth waiting until chickens come home to roost (a good sale).
Chicken Police: Into the Hive was reviewed on Steam using a Windows PC with a code provided by Joystick Ventures. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Chicken Police: Into the Hive is now available on PC; it was previously announced to be coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, & Xbox Series X|S.
