Chicken Police: Paint it red it captured me with its strange, photo-manipulated animal-human forms, but held me there with its heart. It features a narrative that shows a love of world-building and hot characters in a noir setting. That’s why I was eagerly waiting for the sequel, Chicken Police: To the hive.
He got a good runway. Many of the seeds of events and characters have already been sown Paint it redas well as a prologue side game, Zipp’s Cafe. It was going to be bigger and better than what had come before, and it was going to start a novel chapter in the Wild Gentleman’s world of wildlife. Then, halfway through the game, the wheels fell off and now things got complicated.
Chicken Police: To the hive (computer)
Developer: Wild Gentlemen
Publisher: Joystick Ventures
Released: November 7, 2024
Suggested retail price: $24.99
To Ula starts in a similar way to the first game. A lady walks into Detective Santino “Sonny” Featherland’s home office and asks him for support with an off-the-record case. Her husband is missing, or rather her husband’s body. But it’s not a murder he’s trying to solve. None are suspects. It remains a mystery why someone dug up his body (and others) and stole it.
To complicate matters, the man was an insect, one of Clawville’s downtrodden citizens who were assigned to a part of town known as “The Beehive”. Insects are not allowed to leave the hive and animals, especially cops, are not allowed to enter the hive. Undeterred, Sonny grabs his partner, Martin “Marty” MacChicken, and together they set out to solve the case.
Everything plays out very similarly to the original game. You travel around Clawville, collecting clues and talking to people. Sometimes you’ll play a mini-game. Other times, you need to interrogate someone by asking a series of questions to either endear them to you or irritate them enough to get some revelation from them.
Gameplay-wise, there aren’t many surprises; it’s still very much a visual novel with adventure aspects, but there aren’t many of them. One of the biggest improvements is the art style. It may sound strange, but lip-syncing on animal heads is much better. Instead of the typical jaw-dropping sound, they move in different ways while pronouncing syllables. It’s weird to pay attention to this, but it’s actually a pretty polished and noticeable change.
Plus, if for some reason you hated the black and white film noir look of the original game, you’ll soon be able to change it to a brilliant technicolor one. Although I played in color for a while before switching back to monochrome for most of the game, the color is well done. It’s not just about turning off the filter, but a lot of attention has been paid to making the color mode look as crisp as the original black and white mode. Colors are inappropriately brilliant, even neutral colors appear, and Characters wear brilliant outfits. This is a great alternative if you are bored with simpler shading.
The narrative itself begins more confidently. At this point, the plot has been built around this, so you don’t have to throw out so many random comments to try and set the scene. It doesn’t have to work itself out over time. Everything fits together much better and you can hear it in the dialogues.
The first two acts are excellent, relaying the pieces in order and giving you an idea of how they fit together. Sometimes it can be quite challenging. You’ll undoubtedly find out who the real villain is and what happens to the stolen bodies long before the game openly tells you. I expected this to lead to some twist, but the red herrings seem to be confined to the characters themselves and players won’t be surprised. From there, things become irredeemable.
The game has five chapters, and in the third one you start to see things going downhill. This becomes most obvious when the characters know the place they need to go to, but are aware that it is threatening and will likely be a trap. Instead of coming up with an elegant plan, they just do the obvious and go out the back door. Then everything happens simply because it’s written in the script. There’s an excellent minigame here, but I wonder if the visual novel format created some storytelling issues. I feel like there should have been more action in this scene, but there wasn’t.
Nevertheless, it’s not that bad at the moment. After that though, I’d say it’s just bad. In the last two chapters, things take their most obvious course. The characters create a plan that even a child could come up with and join forces. It’s challenging to understand the stakes, the antagonist’s overall motivation, and why many involved have a vested interest. The small threads left hanging are not tied up at all, but rather pushed aside and never properly connected to what is happening.
And then you go through what feel like sets that should have more purpose and screen time, but are largely just for movement. Everything ends without much understanding of how anything was truly resolved through the ending. It looks like the enemy got it all right, but he missed one little detail: the weapon. And that’s it. Good job.
It’s obvious that something went wrong here, but I’m not sure what. The credits begin with words that sound almost like an apology: “This game was hard to make.” He goes on to explain that COVID-19, an industry downturn, a change in publishers, and “personal tragedies” have made growth a challenge. Then he says, “But this story seems to be stronger than all those. We had no choice but to do this, to close this saga and give it a fresh start…” It’s broad enough to be interpreted in different ways, but to me it’s simply the key to foiling their plans.
Second half To Ula it gives the impression of something that has simply been blocked. The main plot points and events are there, but you are guided through them without your own input. No real puzzles, just jump in and get where you’re going.
Apart from the reasons given in the credits, I feel like a few things have been left unsaid. From my perspective it looks like this To Ula he encountered the limitations of the visual novel format, his own ambitions, and the universal rule that something had to be shipped eventually. Of course, I have no idea whether this last part was more motivated by publisher deadlines or development fatigue.
There were many scenes, especially at the end, that should have included some sort of action sequence or cutscene. Just like in the first game, you can go to the police shooting range to practice shooting. Here you even have the opportunity to try out three weapons. Unlike the first game, which had scenes where you utilize training, To Ula there isn’t even a single shooting. I’m not saying Sonny and Marty should have started taking out enemies, but a gang war would have really made it easier.
And then there’s the fact that in between Paint it red AND To Ulathere was a stand-alone prologue, Zipp’s Cafe which was released, as well as another spin-off featuring fellow detectives Moses and Plato in development. Besides, it is WILD Tacticswhich looks like a bigger production overall. I have to wonder how many plot points there are To Ula were created specifically for later games and to what extent were they adapted to accommodate them. And that doesn’t say anything about how busy the team must be.
It’s always strange to go from a part of the game that feels so lively, thoughtful and beautifully set up, to the second half where it feels like as many strings as possible have been grabbed and tied together, leaving many others forgotten and dangling. It kind of reminds me of the ending Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2; you quickly go from one of the best games you’ve ever played to a patchwork slideshow desperately stitching together everything that wasn’t finished. It’s like waiting for fireworks to go off and then someone comes up and pisses on the fuse.
It will take me some time to get over my disappointment when it comes to this matter Chicken Police: To the hive. Besides being excited about the game, I was excited to see how World of Wilderness would develop beyond the stories of the two detectives. I think I’m still interested, but there’s something rotten about it now.
To Ula Isn’t this a bigger and better sequel? Paint it red deserved. This is only half of one, and what happened to the other half is a mystery in itself. All that was found was an empty shell and a few bloody remains. Not in the way he deserved to go out.
