If a game features a cute animal solving a mystery, I will absolutely play it. I’m a huge fan of theFrog Detective series - a trio of games where you play as a frog solving bite-sized mysteries - so when I first set my eyes onDuck Detective: The Secret Salami, I quickly added it to my backlog of games. Then I saw it shared the same fill-in-the-blank puzzle solving as thinky favouritesReturn of the Obra Dinn andThe Case of the Golden Idol, so I instantly began playing it.
The result is a charming and silly mystery with some puzzley detective work that’s the perfect length to play in a single cosy evening. Its puzzles begin pretty lightweight but by the end of the game, you’re faced with some proper head-scratchers, which is a nice surprise! Cosy games and challenging puzzle games don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and Duck Detective embraces this sentiment wholeheartedly.
You’re cast as the duck detective himself, Eugene McQuacklin, a washed-up gumshoe with no cases to solve and struggling to pay rent. It quickly becomes apparent that our feathered friend is at an all-time low when in pure desperation, he leaves a voice message on his divorced wife’s phone shouting“I’m a different duck now. I haven’t touched a slice of bread in weeks!”
McQuacklin needs a job stat, and thankfully one comes just in time. Turns out the BearBus company has a lunch thief in their midst and it’s down to the duck detective to catch the culprit. It’s classic detective work from here on out. You need to find evidence, interview suspects and eventually point the finger (or feather) at the illusive salami bandit.
As you explore the BearBus headquarters, little white dots indicate objects you can investigate and characters you can chat with. When you interact with an object you can inspect it with your magnifying glass, revealing more information about the item. These clues then get added as keywords to your trusty notebook.
This goes for interviewing characters too. You can infer details about them from their appearance Sherlock Holmes-style, and then interrogate them for more information. These keywords also get added to your notebook. For example, while talking to Sophie the Giraffe the magnifying glass reveals a small tear in the corner of her eye. Turns out she’s pretty upset that everyone in the office forgot her birthday. A motive to revert to lunch-stealing crimes perhaps?
When you’ve gathered enough keywords you can dive into your notebook and start deducting. You're tasked with using your clues to complete a fill-in-the-bank statement, aptly called a ‘de-duck-tion’. Each missing word has a drop-down list of keywords you’ve found, and you’ll need to pick the right one to solve the query. When you’ve got it right, you get a big, satisfying stamp of approval and the story will march on with a new scene and more keywords to find.
These de-duck-tions ramp up in difficulty towards the end of the game and make for some nice challenging puzzles. I like that the game asks you to pay close attention to small details, be it regions on a map, where folks sit in the office, or everyone's relationship with each other - colleagues, best friends, or maybe secret lovers? Everything you find is kept in your notebook to stop any annoying backtracking and there's a handy hint system that pokes you in the right direction if you’re stuck or missing a keyword. In this way, Duck Detective is great for mystery newbies, but there’s enough depth for longtime deductive puzzle fans too.
It’s nothing we’ve not seen before, but it’s all done incredibly well. Everything feels super seamless, and that goes for presentation and the game's off-beat humour too. Bold colourful visuals match the energy of the game’s cast of quirky characters, and dialogue stuffed with puns and wordplay is delivered with great comedic timing (the entire character roster is fully voice-acted).
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami feels like the first story in a detective anthology. I’m keen to play more adventures, in the same way that the Frog Detective games released - one a year until we have a bundled trilogy. Looks like I'm not alone in thinking that with the game’s current Overwhelmingly Positive review score on Steam right now. Let’s make Eugene McQuacklin a household name that could rival the fame of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple and Poirot.
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