Fans of theChicken Policegames, rejoice: if you couldn’t get enough of the antagonistic detective duo of the gentlemanly wolf Moses Wildflower and wiry cat Plato Palladias, the pair are about to embark on their very own spin-off adventure.
In The Last Train to Clawville, a passenger on a high-class train is brutally murdered, and despite trying to keep the peace with his police partner, fingers are quickly pointed at protagonist Moses. It’s then up to you tofigure out whodunnitbefore the train’s journey is complete, otherwise you’ll be the one arrested for the crime at the final stop.
I fell in love withthe Chicken Police gamesat PAX East earlier this year, introduced through the sequel Chicken Police: Into the Hive, and immediately purchased and played the first game. I absolutely adore murder mystery games – I’ve played each of the mainline Danganronpa games, and I’m very excited for Ace Attorney Investigations Collection’s launch, so you could say my gumshoes stay polished.
The game begins with Moses and Plato arriving at the departing train station and chatting about an upcoming peace negotiation between the long-warring nations of Stowonia and Torogo. Delegates from each country came to the station in pairs, and I got a chance to chat with and gather clues from everyone as they arrived.
First was the Stowonian delegate and his daughter, a pair of snow leopards from a particularly icy region, whose attitudes were somehow even colder than their homeland’s frigid climate. Next was a famous actor, a slick-talking wolf and his rabbit partner who was noticeably nervous about the trip.
Last came the Torogo delegation: – their religious political leader, an enormous bull adorned in gold and jewelry, and his assistant, a bashful elephant who seemedreallyinterested in Moses. Once all the delegates arrived, we met the jumping spider who served as the train’s conductor, heard a few arachnid puns from him, and then hopped aboard.
If you’re not amused by puns, the Chicken Police series and this spinoff may not be for you – the games are pretty cluckin’ full of them.
Before we got on the train, I had a chance to experiment with Moses’ wolf senses, which allow him to see, hear, and sniff things that may not be plainly apparent. My hearing ability wasn’t active during the demo, but I could look more closely at the Stowonian delegate and the colossal pile of luggage he seemed to have brought for the journey, and I even got to take a good whiff of the train’s exterior before we climbed on, for some reason.
Once aboard, Plato told me to walk around and check the train out, and maybe chat with the other passengers to see how everyone was feeling about the tension between delegates from rival nations. The rabbit told me about a rumor that someone was planning to murder the Stowonian leader, and that plenty of people had been whispering about it since before we even hopped aboard.
I chose to talk with the Torogo delegate’s assistant, who batted her eyes and blushed an awful lot while she was talking to me. Here, I started my first interrogation, asking the assistant a litany of questions about the delegate from Torogo, the history between the two countries, and her feelings on the upcoming peace talks. You’ll need to suss out lies and press issues during each question in your investigation to figure out if you’re being deceived, which I only managed to do successfully for three of the five questions I asked her – I’m just too easily wooed by charming elephant ladies, I guess.
This was unfortunately the end of my demo, but I immediately wanted to climb back aboard the Last Train to Clawville. The characters were all charming, even the ones who were total jerks to me.
The actor offered me an autograph when I introduced myself, his rabbit companion chided him for assuming everyone was a fan, the elephant was a huge flirt, the bull was already annoyed when we met, and the fact that I hated the two snow leopards for their coldness speaks to the fact that they’re well-done characters, because I wouldn’t have cared about them being awful otherwise.
Despite being anthropomorphized animals, all the characters in Moses and Plato: The Last Train to Clawville seem shockingly human in their dispositions. It was almost easy enough to forget I was playing the game with a veritable zoo of animals on my screen until one of them made a joke about their species.
No two characters felt the same, which will add plenty of challenges to solving the murder mystery before we reach the last station in Clawville. Interrogations and conversations never felt forced or flat, and I was proud of myself each time I picked up on someone being deceptive with me. All I wanted was more of everyone on that locomotive. Moses and Plato: The Last Train to Clawville will be launching later in 2024, and I already can’t wait to help clear Moses’ name.
PAX West
PAX West began life as the Penny Arcade Expo, a celebration of gaming culture hosted by the creators of the titular webcomic. Held in Seattle, it draws over 100,000 visitors.
