Everyone's favourite bird sleuth is taking a vacation in Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping

Megan Bidmead, 19 June 2025

It feels a bit like a legal requirement to include a duck pun at some point, so maybe we should get it out of the way upfront. This is a fun and silly noir detective game with a quacking (sorry) sense of humour. There. Now it's out of my system, I promise I won't do it again.

Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping puts you back in the webbed feet of Eugene McQuacklin, a straight-talking (and tax-dodging) duck detective. If you haven't played the first game (The Secret Salami), there's no need to worry; you'll be introduced to the mechanics afresh, and the characters are instantly understandable, so you can play them in any order without feeling like you're missing something vital. Within minutes, you'll understand that Eugene is sardonic, bread-addicted, and recently dumped by his exasperated ex-wife. He's behind on his bills, he's perpetually furious, and he's slightly insecure about his double chin. That's our protagonist; ruthlessly determined to uncover the truth, and quite good at burying his head in the sand when he needs to.

Luckily, the whirlwind of joy that is Freddy Frederson, Eugene's long-suffering and slightly dim roommate, is ready to take our frazzled detective on a little glamping vacation. Of course, things go downhill when they arrive to find the campsite populated by a series of new characters who hold some deep and potentially embarrassing secrets. (And there might be some ghosts hanging around too, but that's what you get for running a glamping site in the shadow of an abandoned sanatorium.) How is everyone linked to each other? Who is responsible for breaking and entering? And how come that one campsite toilet is always locked?

Eugene takes it upon himself to deep dive into everyone's problems to uncover the truth, and does so with an intensity balanced out perfectly by Freddy's whimsical cluelessness. The voice acting is brilliant, with Sean Chiplock and Brian David Gilbert doing a superb job of Eugene and Freddy, respectively.

The gameplay is a bit like the Golden Idol games, only with less madness and death. In each area, you can find clues, looking over them closely with your magnifying glass to pick up on small details. Eugene finds useful hints in emails, in letters, or by nosing (beaking?) through bags and suitcases. The mysteries you'll be solving range from spying and extortion to simple matters of the heart, becoming progressively more serious as you go along.

In terms of puzzles, this is a pretty straightforward series of mysteries to solve, beginning with the obvious: you can solve the first mystery (why is Eugene's ex ignoring him?) by poking through Eugene's laptop, for example. Later, you'll need to zoom in pretty closely on the clues to make connections, and smaller details may be easier to miss. There's a decent hint system here, so you can get a little nudge in the right direction without having the answer handed to you on a plate. If you're still struggling, you can keep getting more clues until the answer clicks into your brain.

As well as the hint system, there are two different modes you can choose from to make things easier: Sleuth Mode (in which incorrect answers are not highlighted) and Story Mode (in which incorrect answers are highlighted). The latter makes it clear where you went wrong if your answers are incorrect, and makes narrowing things down a little easier. The game also offers the option of a dyslexia-friendly font as an accessibility feature, which is worth noting. It's a text-heavy game, so this is a welcome addition.

The writing is excellent. The wry sense of humour is embedded in everything from the dialogue (brought to life, again, by the brilliant voice acting) to Eugene's brutal inner voice, which quite often spills out into his outer voice as well. Eugene's observations made me laugh out loud several times: he describes Freddy as being 'tacky', 'insufferable', and having 'questionable style' in an absolutely brutal takedown. Small background details are quite fun to find, too, and the side characters are excellent; from the crystal-hoarding campsite manager (Live Laugh Love!) to the fragile chess influencer with an overinflated ego. It's worth hovering over everything to make sure you don't miss a sly little joke hidden among the clues.

Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is over and done with in around 2-3 hours, making it a short-but-sweet experience similar to the first game. I'd describe it as a fun, cosy mystery game with some interesting puzzles and the kind of dry sense of humour you'd expect from a game involving an exasperated duck detective. At the end of the game, you get to make a judgment call about what should happen to the suspects; this genuinely threw me for a moment, and without giving anything away, the ending left me wanting another outing with Eugene as soon as possible.