Mystery games with animals in the lead roles seem oddly popular, with Aviary Attorney being one of the most notable ones we’ve discussed in the past.

And another such game is Chicken Police – Paint it RED, an adventure game styled after classic film noir detective stories in which you play Sonny, a once-famous detective now on forced leave who reunites with his estranged partner to solve one last case.

It is set in a world of anthropomorphic animals, but unlike the more stylized approach of games like Aviary Attorney, the character designs in Chicken Police are photorealistic humans with animal heads. The effect is uncanny and somewhere between terrifying and hilarious.

But… the more I played, the more I got used to them. By the time I reached the end of the game, the designs felt almost normal.

You see, Chicken Police handles its world in such a way that I could immerse myself in it and believe the setting despite its bizarre presentation. When I saw the character models and heard the film noir narration (with the main character delivering an impressive Humphrey Bogart impression), I expected it to be a parody.

But while it definitely has humor and funny nods to the genre, Chicken Police plays its premise straight. It is a gritty detective story, and since it takes itself seriously, I can look past the fact that I’m playing as a human-shaped chicken in a trench coat and start seeing who he is as a character. It’s a dark story at times that deals with mature themes, although the undercurrent of humor keeps it from getting too bleak.

The adventure game elements in Chicken Police are light, with only a handful of puzzles. Most of your time will be spent visiting locations and talking to characters.

During key conversations, you’ll be able to question a character in a special sequence where you must choose the right questions to ask to either increase or decrease the character’s opinion of you while trying to avoid being steered off-topic. At the end of these segments, you’re graded based on how well you did, with the option to retry if you want a better score. There are a handful of mini-games segments, as well.

In between required story scenes, other areas open up for you to visit for optional conversations. There is a ton of optional dialogue and worldbuilding details in this game. If you’re like me, the sort of player who likes to inspect everything and exhaust every conversation option, you’ll be rewarded with nearly every visit and revisit to a location having new conversations both for talking to characters and inspecting items in the background. Everything is fully voiced, too.

All of this results a world built up beyond the details that pertain to the main plot, which is part of what helps it stand out. The case in Chicken Police – Paint it RED is wrapped up by the end, but it leaves open the possibility of further Chicken Police stories to come… and that’s something I’d definitely like to see.