Chicken Police – Paint it RED! Review

Classed as a visual novel, Chicken Police is anything but. Making your way through this game you feel as if you’re working a case with Bogart…if he was a giant chicken. The setting is Clawville, where the streets are grey, and what little colour that’s left is in the rich parts of town. This game leads as a point and click, visual novel, but introduces elements that help it move into adventure territory. Thanks to its excellent voice actors, not once did I feel like I was going through walls of text.

You’re introduced as Sonny Featherland, a down and out cop on the edge of retirement. Your ex-partner, Marty MacChicken is a gun nut who managed to shoot you on your last job together. The scene is black and white, but the case bleeds red. An impala stands in your office and tells you that her boss is being threatened. You’ve been chosen for the job as you’re famous thanks to a crime series written about your previous cases, and this client needs protection as she’s connected to the mob. 

A debut release from The Wild Gentleman, the progress of this game has gone from 8-bit pixels to the photo-animated designs you see today. Sticking chicken heads on human bodies may sound strange, and be a little uncomfortable at first, but the team pulled it off well, creating a plethora of fauna to gawk and ‘aw’ at. 

The writing sticks to its style, with chicken puns a-plenty, and nods to the film-noir greats. But beware, with quite random ferocity, what in one scene is written as ‘cluck’, soon changes to a higher rating, causing this game to come with an adult only label for not much reason. The characters are well cast, and have the perfect accents to match, making you look forward to meeting them after a profile sketch has been added to your journal.

Every detective has his notebook, and Sonny’s consists of ‘Clues’, ‘People’, ‘Places’, & a ‘Codex’. This is good to read through as more are added, as there are times you may find important information within. It’s the in-depth detail of the world you’re thrown into that shows how much thought has gone into this game. The codex contains lore, and Gods as well as information about whole continents and their people. 

Ticking off all film-noir boxes, we see flashbacks, hear talk about the great ‘meat war’, and are introduced to a femme fatale dame in distress. The tone is dark, with a slow jazz soundtrack. Occasionally you’ll be introduced to a mini game such as shooting another car, or zipping up a lady’s dress. These add-ons feel as such, being slightly tacked on to add variety to what was slipping into a full-on visual novel. The only other area that lacks definition – and is unfortunately an integral part – is when we can question characters.

The questioning process gives you choices of what to ask on the left, and your notepad of ‘Subject’, ‘Focus’, and ‘Impressions’ on the right, with a detective meter of plus or minus determining how well you have chosen the options that were given to you. The ‘tutorial’ for this, simply shows drawings which don’t altogether get the point across that they’re trying to convey. I spent many question rounds, losing points when I felt like what I was asking would gain us a valuable clue for the story. About two-thirds through the game I decided that it didn’t matter what I thought, the game was clearly so pre-determined that it would hardly accept any sway off the line. 

Overall, this game has an excellent tale to tell, brilliantly voiced and created characters, and is a perfect addition to anyone’s library who enjoys story-driven, point and click adventures. I believe there’s room for DLCs thanks to the extensive world lore involved, and their next update will likely alter the determining factors during questioning to help players not only understand it better but make the decision process make more sense.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.