Evidently Chickentown

This might be one of my shortest posts ever. Fingers crossed!

As already documented, I only managed to find four demos I wanted to try for this quarter's Next Fest. Two of them I have already posted about. That leaves just two more. (Let me know if I'm going too fast for anyone...)

The first of the remaining pair I tried was Copycat and when I say "tried" I mean it in the most absolutely minimal sense possible. I did technically log in. Steam registered one minute played but I never saw any of the demo. At all.

As I said when I first mentioned Copycat, I was uncomfortable with both the tone and the content of the game but I decided to take a look anyway. That determination lasted as far as the very first screen after the opening credits, which was when I discovered I'd need to use a controller to play the demo.

I could have ignored the warning and tried to muddle through with keyboard and mouse and of course I do have a controller ready and waiting for situations like this but since I'd already found the developers' description of the game confusing and unsettling and the trailer quite disturbing, I was more than happy to have an excuse to abandon the whole thing. 

I'd really only been doing it out of some misplaced sense of duty, anyway. Screw that! I logged back out, uninstalled the demo and immediately felt better about myself, almost as if I'd somehow done something worthwhile. Brain chemistry is weird.

That just left the final demo: Chicken Police: Into The Hive. Here, I was on much safer ground, having played and thoroughly enjoyed the first Chicken Police game. My main concern was whether I'd be able to find anything new to say about it.

I didn't, not really. As far as I played, it's the formula as before. Same characters, same gameplay, same setting. The main difference is you have the option to play in either noirish black and white, as per the original, or in technicolor. Well, color, anyway.

I imagine the sequel starts to develop its own personality when you reach the sub-titular Hive but the forty minutes I spent with the game were all about getting the paperwork done. You don't just walk into The Hive. Okay, you probably do but first you need a permit.

I was completely satisfied with what I saw. As I said, I enjoyed the first game and this seems like nothing more - but much more importantly nothing less - than exactly the same. It's on my wishlist now and I very much look forward to playing the finished game.

The strange thing is... I could do that right now. Or at least I think I think I could. The demo appears to be a first draft of the whole game or, as the title card puts it, "a short, demo version of the full game". 

I don't think I've ever played a demo that was the full game before. I still haven't or at least not all the way through. If I'd wanted to see the whole thing I'd have had to play all the way through in one session because there's no option to Save and no Autosave, either. When you come out of the demo and go back to the Menu, the Continue button is greyed out. If you want to carry on, you have to start over from the beginning.

That was never going to happen, for two very good reasons. Firstly, it took me forty minutes just to get the fricken' permit! Imagine how long it would take to play the whole game! What am I going to do? Leave the game running for however long it takes to finish it? It took me a couple of weeks of playing a session or two most days to finish the first one. Next Fest would be over before I got to the finale.

Secondly, if I'm going to buy the finished version, which I am, why would I want to play through the entire game now, when it's still a "work in progress"? Okay, don't answer that. I realise that's what we all do every time we sign up for an Early Access title...

I don't need a second reason not to complete the demo, anyway. That first one covers all the ground I need. From what I've already seen, I can tell it's going to be an entertaining, amusing and enjoyable game. I'm quite happy to wait until I can play it in comfortable sessions rather than in some kind of jittery, sleep-deprived marathon.

And that concludes my very brief flirtation with the Winter 2024 Next Fest. Except not quite...

Thanks to several positive reviews and a suggestion from Tyler Edwards in the comments, I'm just now downloading Lightyear Frontier. I'm not sure I'll have time to play it before the event comes to an end but if I do you'll no doubt read about it here.

(Almost) Nobody Here But Us Chickens

I spent a painful half-hour on Monday night, trying to find half a dozen demos from the current Steam Next Fest worth the download. They had to be demos I thought I might at least get far enough through to have something to write about. 

It was hard work. If the Fall batch was bad, this one is worse. 

There were plenty of survival titles I could have taken a look at but I think I might be a bit survivaled out right now so I gave them a pass. A couple I seriously considered have since been covered by Scopique. Nothing he had to say made me feel like going back and getting either of them.

I could barely find any traditional point & click adventures at all. Maybe they were all in the Storyteller's Festival. Perhaps you can't be in that and in Next Fest as well. Or maybe there just weren't any new ones. I think Next Fest is for unreleased games and come to think of it, most of the ones in the Storyteller's Festival were for games already out.

There were a few MMOs/MMORPGs. I thought about it but they looked very generic. I might be done with trying things just because they blow the MMORPG dog whistle. 

There was no shortage of  things calling themselves "Visual Novels" or "Interactive Fiction" but most of them were pornographic. There's altogether too much of that kind of thing in Next Fest, he said, in his best maiden aunt voice.

If I'm going to be honest, searching through the demos on offer this time felt, on occasion, actively unpleasant. I don't recall it feeling that way a year ago. I'm not sure if the curation has lapsed or if I've become more sensitive. Both, probably.

Eventually I did manage to find four titles I thought I might enjoy. Four. It's not much of a reward for thirty minutes of eyestrain, is it? And even then, one of them was a sequel to a game I've already played. At least I learned that's coming, which is something, I guess.

The four titles I ended up with were:

Copycat - "A wholesome, narrative-driven game about rejection, belonging and the true meaning of home. It follows the story of a newly adopted shelter cat who becomes the victim of an elaborate plan when a jealous, stray copycat steals her place in the household."

Keywords that drew me in: "wholesome", "narative-driven", "cat". 

Keywords that almost pushed me out again: "rejection", "jealous", "steals".

I'm really not in the mood for a game that tries to make me feel bad before it makes me feel good. I worry whether a game with that sort of story arc could even offer the necessary, positive emotional payoff in a demo. It wouldn't be the first demo I've played that shows you a bad time and then just stops, leaving you hanging with no catharsis.

The full description on the Steam page makes the full game sound brutal. After a whole lot of stuff about how "intimate, magical and hopeful" it is and how it's "perfect to cuddle up with on a rainy afternoon", this drops:

"Everything changes when Olive falls ill, and a stray copycat steals Dawn’s place in the home—forcing Dawn onto the streets."

Geez. And that's what we're calling "cosy" nowadays? And the trailer makes it look more like a horror game than anything. 

I may just have talked myself out of even trying this one. I have all the emotional trauma I can handle and more with My Daemon, right now.

Yet Another Fantasy Title - "Become a rogue in a fantasy action adventure game filled with absurd humor. Go on a quest to kill the dragon - and realize this is only the beginning. Learn spells from a wizard and brawling from an orc. Save the kingdom, destroy a ring, fight a monstrous beaver!"

Sounds safe enough. Maybe a little too safe. Is there even any satire or irony in learning spells from a wizard or brawling from an orc? The other way around, maybe...

 The question here is, do I really need another ironic, "meta" take on traditional fantasy RPG tropes? I mean, I am literally in the middle of playing one at the moment ("Literally in the middle of" in this case meaning I got half way through and stopped.) 

The trailer looks halfway decent, though, and sufficiently different in style and tone from The Dungeon of Naheubeuk that it shouldn't feel too much like going over the exact same ground. That umpty-tumpty hobbit music is going to get old real fast, though.

Chicken Police: Into The Hive - "A wild tale of loss, friendship, conspiracy, and... chickens?! Two rooster detectives are about to venture into the insect underworld to uncover a worldwide conspiracy, while also battling their inherent demons in this animal noir adventure satire."

Okay, now we're on solid ground! I really enjoyed the first Chicken Police game. It managed to be both satirical and a genuinely intriguing mystery, with well-rounded, well-written characters, good voice acting, a compelling plot and, best of all, a fascinating and somewhat unusual setting. 

There's a good deal about The Hive in the first game. It sounded a very curious place. It seemed to be a part of the city where even the police didn't want to go, a kind of ghetto for insects in a city attuned to vertebrates. I wanted to see more of it then than I had the chance. Now it looks like I'll get my wish. 

Summer House - "A tiny building game about beautiful lived-in houses. No rules or restrictions, just pure creativity."

I've already played this one. I'll save the details for a post of its own (Which will mostly be screenshots, I imagine.) but I liked it a lot. It's a toy, not a game, but it's a good toy.

And that's all the demos I'm going to try this time around. Probably. Unless someone else plays a good one I missed and posts about it. Then I'll just jump their train.

Blurred Visions Of The Near-Past

I don't really have anything much I want to say today but I didn't want to skip another post after the weekend, so I guess it's random grab-bag of nonsense time. On a Monday, yet. And why not? Why should Fridays have all the fun?

Chicken Police

I finished it! A few days ago, actually. Unlike Steam, Amazon Prime Gaming doesn't tell you how long you've been playing, or at least if it does, I've never spotted it. What I can say is, I played at least one session pretty much every day until I got to the end and for however long that was, it was my go-to game.

I'm not going to review it or even say much more about what I thought about it than I did in my first post. I will say the quality held up right to the end and I never lost interest or enthusiasm, which is about all you can ask. 

As noted, the gameplay elements can feel a little abstract - not to say irrelevant - and the mini-games really don't add anything. All the strengths are in the writing, voice-acting and visuals. That said, I did find it fun to play as a game, not just as a visual novel, which arguably is mostly what the experience is. I did find the detective bits quite engaging, even if it's unclear how success or lack of it affects the outcome.

I was amused to discover, while doing some out of game research, that it's "Based on a true story". Or, more accurately, a true meme. It's this one:

The writers saw that thirty-second clip and span an entire game out of it. If nothing else, they at least have a ready answer for the inevitable "Where do you guys get your ideas from?"

The Wild Gentlemen have a new game in development but don't ask me where they got the idea for this one. It's called RetroSpace and according to Rock, Paper, Shotgun it's "a disco-punk immersive sim", which makes it sound even more like Disco Elysium than the last one. I would be excited but I watched the trailer and it really didn't gel for me. Still, very early days. Herer it is, anyway. Maybe it'll do more for you than it did for me.

Faux Productivity

This is a term used and quite possibly invented by Krikket of Nerd Girl Thoughts and a very useful one it is, too. For a while I was thinking of dedicating a whole post to it in response, as Dan/MagiWasTaken from Indiecator did but in the end I decided I didn't have that much to say about it. 

I don't not have anything to say though, so here's what I do have: I wonder what, if anything, outside of the four base tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, even counts as Real Productivity? Certainly not much that anyone I follow ever writes about, that's for sure!

More to the point, to take a classic cliche example I used to throw in to arguments about worthwhile or entertaining in-game activities, before I realised just what a poor analogy it was, is cleaning your oven really a more productive use of your time than running a dungeon for the umpteenth time? I mean, what's so all-fired wonderful about a clean oven? If you don't clean the thing, does it not work any more? Do you get ill? Does anything bad happen? At all? And aren't most ovens self-cleaning these days and even if they aren't, who ever examines the inside of their oven anyway? The oven police?

When it comes to many - probably most - real-world chore-like activities, my feeling is the truly necesary ones always get done and the rest fill exactly the same "faux productivity" role as anything you might do while playing a game, watching a show or writing a blog post. Yes, I feel almost unaccountably good about myself when I've spent an hour hand-washing the paintwork in the hallway but has anything in my life changed materially for the better because of the removal of a layer of dust or am I just enjoying the feel-good factor that comes from slotting comfortably into a societal norm?

Discuss. Or don't. See? Doesn't matter either way!

I think I'll carry on posting nonsense, playing games and aggrandizing pop culture as well as cutting the grass, tidying the cupboards and washing the car and I won't waste any time trying to work out which of them matters more, so long as they all make me feel like I've done something worth doing.

(Heh! Like I'd wash the car...)

He's French, You Know...

And finally - because as I said, I really don't have anything to say - let's have a couple of tunes. Only a couple. I don't want to walk all over my own What I've Been Listening To Lately post that I'm going to need in a few days' time. It's not like I'm dripping with post ideas right now...

First, there's this, which doesn't have a video so might otherwise not have gotten space. It's a cover of J'aime Les Filles, originally recorded by Jacques Dutronc and written by him and Jacques Lanzmann.

J'Aime Les Filles - Kate Bollinger

Now, you don't exactly find yourself snowed under by Jacques Dutronc covers, so that's probably reason enough to call attention to this one but it's also really good. Dare I say it, better than the original, although maybe that's just a comment on time passing.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this song is the lyric. If you don't speak French and can't be bothered to look up the translation, you'd probably assume it was one of those "California Girls" style sixties paeans to the ready availability of willing female company for the aspiring stars of any rock, pop or other musical subgenre, an interpretation that, these days, would most likely set your teeth slightly on edge.

That, however, is not what the song is about - or not exactly. Here's a link to the full, translated lyric but for short try this sample verse:

"I love the girls from Renault

I love the girls from Citroen

I love the girls of the blast furnaces

I love the girls who work at a chain store"

 

Jacques also claims to love the girls who camp, go on strike and make him laugh, as well as intellectual girls and girls both with and without Dad. No, I have no idea about that last one, either. Maybe it's a French thing.

And finally, finally...

Rigmarole - Whitmer Thomas

I watched one video by Whitmer Thomas (Not this one.) and ended up watching just about everything he has on YouTube, including his stand-up comedy. Like Wilbur Soot from a previous post, Whitmer seems to be what used to be called a multi-hyphenate. He can sing, he can tell jokes, he acts... I imagine, like Wilbur, he has a book out or if not he he soon will...

More about Whitmer Thomas another time. Probably. Depending what else turns up, I guess. It's not like I plan ahead or anything...

I Feel Like Chicken Tonight

Chicken Police - Paint it RED! is a compelling game, comprising a short, introductory tutorial and four chapters. I've just finished Chapter One. Unlike Steam, Prime Gaming doesn't keep a tally of how long you've been playing but with a session last night, another this morning and a third this afternoon, I guess my time on ride-along with the Rooster Cops adds up to three or four hours at least.

If the game reminds me of anything other than the many anthropomorphic, noiresque point&clicks I've played before, it's probably Disco Elysium. The similarity isn't so much in the gameplay, the visuals or the writing as it is in the atmosphere. There's a seedy, down-at-heel, fin de siecle feel to the world, which comes freighted with a wealth of - mostly unexplained - history and politics. You get the perpetual sense that there's a fully-developed world behind the stagey sets, a world of which you're seeing the merest sliver.

Even more so than with Disco Elysium, which does have an actual novel somewhere in its development history, I'd love to read some fiction set in the Wilderness, the world of the Chicken Police. Someone's taken a deal of trouble to sketch out the problems inherant in a society of animals, the racial/species tensions, predator/prey interactions and the dificulties of understanding that must arise so inevitably between sentient beings as different from another as cats and cockroaches.

Like Disco Elysium, the product of Za/Um, an Estonian studio, Chicken Police also stems from Eastern Europe, the studio behind the game, The Wild Gentlemen, being based in Hungary. According to one source, the studio was originally named King Fox, which would certainly tie-in with the political structure of Clawville, the city-state where the action takes place, ruled as it is by Hector III, an actual fox king.

Excellent voice acting by an experienced cast of native English-speakers does a great deal to smooth the edges of what frequently comes across as a somewhat arch translation. I noticed this in Disco Elysium at times although I think it's more obvious in Chicken Police. 

Far from getting in the way, the very slightly off-kilter nuances of the text serve to heighten the otherness of this strange world, populated by creatures who refer to themselves as "animals" but who present as human beings with animal heads. Theeir hands strike me as peculiarly disturbing. 

Humans themselves are known only as mythical creatures, often portrayed as angels. I imagine there's subtext.

Dialog loops from pragmatic, prosaic and cliched to highly abstracted. Numerous conversations disappear unexpectedly down eliptical culs-de-sac, wherein the meaning becomes occluded or altogether lost. Similarly, the many cultural references, pop and not-so-pop, are doled out like workhouse dumplings, to be taken and digested - or not - as they come. Don't expect any gravy to help them slip down easily.

Surrounded by the richness of the metatext, the noir narrative itself tends to fade into the foreground. As Chris Lawn says, in what seems to me to be a very fair review of the game at Player2.net.au, "A detective noir story is cool but is such a small slice of what could be." 

Like Chris, I too would love to learn more about Predation, the Meat War and the divide between the Royalists and the Separatists. I want to delve more deeply into the systemic racism of Clawville, expressed in its most extreme and virulent form by the trade in larvae, whereby the children of impoverished insect mothers trapped in the barred ghetto of The Hive, end up on the plates of rich diners in upper-class restaurants. 

Shocking though that is, perhaps the frequent, casual racist comments of Marty, one of the two protagonists and a serving police officer, represent a more insidious malaise. His unthinking, denigratory wisecracks suggest a level of intolerance within the justice system that must go bone-deep.

If the narrative is evenly distributed across all four chapters, many more hours of revelations lie ahead. At times it's an unpleasant journey but, as I said at the start, it's a compelling one. 

Next stop The Sweltering Nile. a high-class brothel, run by a crocodile. 

Let's hope it doesn't all end in tears.