Chicken Police sequel Into the Hive is a pulpy noir delight.

After checking out the demo, I’ve now played The Wild Gentlemen’s hard-boiled detective adventure game Chicken Police: Into the Hive, the sequel to the award-winning Chicken Police: Paint it Red.

Sonny and Marty, detectives and titular Chicken Police, explore the underbelly of the Wilderness, segregated between animals in the city of Clawville and the insects that live in the underworld-ruled ghetto known as the Hive. While investigating their case, they carefully navigate a world of political corruption, sordid affairs, and scheming criminals hiding a terrible conspiracy distressingly close to the surface.

The storytelling here is top-notch, played out by over two dozen well-rounded, fully voiced characters. The dialogue is terrific, entirely in tune with the game's hard-boiled film noir atmosphere. I love the surrealism of all the characters being photographically realistic anthropomorphized animals. Still, it’s easy to forget that side of the game and get lost in the noir story.

Speaking of noir, Into the Hive also includes the option to play the game in color. I guess this is a nice thing for the developers to include, but it’s totally unnecessary and only serves to hurt the wonderfully realized atmosphere of the game. That said, the game’s photorealistic 2D collage-style graphics look great either way, lent a lot of life by the game’s excellent mesh-based animation.

Into the Hive plays like a straightforward adventure game. You can click on and interact with hotspots, which you can helpfully reveal with the push of a button. The game’s inventory system is what you’d expect—examine, use, and combine items to solve puzzles. The conversation tree interrogation puzzles are more interesting than the item-based ones; your choices of how hard you go after a character in your questioning will vary your outcome. Aside from the adventuring, Into the Hive also features some non-critical minigames; these were alright, but I found them to be more of a distraction than anything else.

I recommend Into the Hive for any adventure game fan. If you didn’t play the first game, Paint It Red, you’ll miss some context but still be able to enjoy this game. This is a high-quality production all-around.

Chicken Police: Into the Hive is available now on Steam for PC.

Overall Score: 8/10

Played on: Steam Deck