In 2024, I set a New Year’s Resolution to complete 60 games. To stay on track, I focused on shorter games, like the Frog Detective trilogy on PC Game Pass, which can be finished in five hours. These games made me think about the popularity of games featuring animals as police or private investigators. In 2016, Disney’s animated film Zootopia was a huge success, possibly influencing the current trend in game development.
However, the rise of animal detective games may also be due to developers wanting to create detective-themed games without including police elements. Despite the title, Frog Detective 3 is portrayed as an anti-police game, reflecting changing attitudes toward the police in society. Since the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013 and the subsequent protests in 2014 and 2020, game developers have had to reconsider the portrayal of police in their games. While detective game mechanics are still popular, developers have been cautious about including cop heroes without additional context.
Some have opted for private investigator protagonists, but their involvement with the police can still raise similar concerns. Games like Disco Elysium, featuring a flawed cop protagonist, avoid criticism by portraying the character as corrupt. However, developers may be drawn to animal cops as a way to incorporate cop mechanics into games while maintaining a light-hearted atmosphere and deflecting criticism.
