"To my mom and dad who didn't freak out when I told them I was working on pin-up girls with animal heads and mad beavers: thanks!" - Chicken Police Developer.
Chicken Police: Paint it Red is a visual novel mixed with some point and click elements and bizarrely also the second anthropomorphic Film Noir game I've played in the last year. You play the role of Santino 'Sonny' Featherland. A suspended cop 121 days from retirement who on New Years Eve is dragged into a case with personal ties. It pretty much goes through every trope there is on the way, sexy femme fatale - check! Alcoholic cop - check! Jazz club - check! Angry police chief - check! Despite that though it's a pretty enjoyable ride for it's 4 - 5 hour playtime. This game is far better than I feel it has a right to be.
The game leaves a stylistic impression using photos of real people, animals and locations merged together. It's all cohesively mixed in an almost Sin City black and white colour scheme broken up extremely rarely with a splash of colour for effective results. Most of the characters actually look surprisingly good with this art style and lighting, it's just a shame the writing with it is a little more hit and miss. Some moments feel spot on with Sonny's voice acting especially in his role of the hardboiled suspended cop absolutely nailing every scene. Unfortunately not all characters manage to hit in the same way he does and the writing can veer with that from leaning into the film noir genre amusingly to pretty cringey fairly quickly. Having said all this though I did get invested in what was happening and the greater world around the city of Clawville this game is confined too as you speak to a lot of the bizarre characters and discover more lore about the wider universe the game is set in.
When not conversing there are some basic sleuth type puzzles matching evidence and interrogating people related to the case. The latter feels more like guesswork though as though it gives you hints as to the type of question to ask there isn't really any clear indication based on the choices presented as they are all kind of the same but it's a small quibble as it's hard to fail but that could have been tightened up.
Regardless of my small complaints about some of the writing and puzzles I actually did have a very enjoyable time with this. I really like the visuals, the jazz music, the characters, and world presented here and wouldn't mind a sequel expanding on Santino and Marty's adventures as the Chicken Police!
Chicken Police: Paint it Red is a visual novel mixed with some point and click elements and bizarrely also the second anthropomorphic Film Noir game I've played in the last year. You play the role of Santino 'Sonny' Featherland. A suspended cop 121 days from retirement who on New Years Eve is dragged into a case with personal ties. It pretty much goes through every trope there is on the way, sexy femme fatale - check! Alcoholic cop - check! Jazz club - check! Angry police chief - check! Despite that though it's a pretty enjoyable ride for it's 4 - 5 hour playtime. This game is far better than I feel it has a right to be.
The game leaves a stylistic impression using photos of real people, animals and locations merged together. It's all cohesively mixed in an almost Sin City black and white colour scheme broken up extremely rarely with a splash of colour for effective results. Most of the characters actually look surprisingly good with this art style and lighting, it's just a shame the writing with it is a little more hit and miss. Some moments feel spot on with Sonny's voice acting especially in his role of the hardboiled suspended cop absolutely nailing every scene. Unfortunately not all characters manage to hit in the same way he does and the writing can veer with that from leaning into the film noir genre amusingly to pretty cringey fairly quickly. Having said all this though I did get invested in what was happening and the greater world around the city of Clawville this game is confined too as you speak to a lot of the bizarre characters and discover more lore about the wider universe the game is set in.
When not conversing there are some basic sleuth type puzzles matching evidence and interrogating people related to the case. The latter feels more like guesswork though as though it gives you hints as to the type of question to ask there isn't really any clear indication based on the choices presented as they are all kind of the same but it's a small quibble as it's hard to fail but that could have been tightened up.
Regardless of my small complaints about some of the writing and puzzles I actually did have a very enjoyable time with this. I really like the visuals, the jazz music, the characters, and world presented here and wouldn't mind a sequel expanding on Santino and Marty's adventures as the Chicken Police!