Developer: Happy Broccoli Games

Publisher: Happy Broccoli Games

Played on: PC

Release Date: May 23, 2024

Played with: Xbox Core

Paid: $9.27

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I was excited going into Duck Detective: The Secret Salami.  Since it came out earlier this year, it’s a game that’s lived rent-free in the back of my mind, largely off the strength of its humorous title and fun premise.  A cute little duck acting as a hard-boiled detective and interacting with a cast of colourful characters is the kind of thing that seems tailor-made for my tastes, and the fact that one of its primary mechanisms is a fill-in-the-blanks method of making deductions (sorry, “deducktions”) a la The Case of the Golden Idol (a game I haven’t played but thoroughly enjoyed watching a playthrough of) is the icing on the cake.  Add in some great voice acting, solid writing, and a tightly-paced runtime, and you’ve got a recipe for a quality experience.  And without burying the lede, while it didn’t blow me away, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is still an entertaining mystery game that kept me engaged the whole time I played it.

Eugene McQuacklin is a former police officer turned run-down, grizzled detective.  Nursing a bread addiction, struggling to make rent, and recovering from a divorce, he’s a picturesque representation of a classic noir gumshoe, effortlessly balancing a sense of world-weariness with the sly wit I’d expect of an old-school investigator.  When he gets called down to the local BearBus station by an unknown individual to investigate some stolen lunch, it seems like a routine case.  As the search for the Salami Bandit continues, though, things rapidly spiral into conspiracy, and it becomes clear that there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes at BearBus.

As a story-centric game, I’d expect the writing for Duck Detective to be strong, but it simply opts for solid.  I didn’t have any real issues with it beyond a few times where the on-screen text didn’t match up with the vocal performances, but it also didn’t regularly excite me or have me laughing out loud.  It got some smirks for sure, but it hews much closer to the “mystery” side of the “comedy mystery” genre.  And even then, it opts for a lot of the “eureka” moments to be had by the player during puzzle-solving sections, rather than delivering them via dialogue.  I don’t think this was a bad choice, as it does help to make the player feel like they’re a part of the story, rather than a mere observer.  However, it does mean that taken on its own, the writing is more like a day-old loaf of bread rather than a fresh-from-the-oven delicacy: still tasty, but more utilitarian, rather than something to be savoured.

What unequivocally elevates the script is the quality voice acting throughout Duck Detective.  Wandering around the BearBus offices, you’ll meet a cast of quirky characters, all of whom engage and delight with their performances.  From the frazzled, perpetually overworked customer service agent, to the curmudgeonly manager who clearly doesn’t want Eugene around, I was consistently pleased with the vocal deliveries in the game.  They’re over the top and cartoony, sure, but it fits with the tone the game is going for: mysterious, sure, but also not taking itself too seriously.

Solving the mystery of the Salami Bandit requires a lot of investigating, and Duck Detective’s gameplay mechanisms are more than up to the task.  Meandering around the BearBus office, you’ll be able to search for clues with your trusty magnifying glass.  Selecting something (or someone) to investigate will open a menu where you can move your magnifying glass around, highlighting points of interest and picking out key takeaways in a list on the side.  Afterwards, the information gets saved in your notes, so you can look back later if you need to recall something.  It’s a clean system, making it clear when you’ve gotten all the available clues out of your search, and the notes were invaluable as a reference point for me as the information started to pile up in the late game.

The main purpose of hunting for clues and talking to people is to gain keywords, which are used in the crux of Duck Detective’s gameplay: making “deducktions”.  As discussed earlier, these take the form of fill-in-the-blanks challenges where you’re presented with several statements with various names, places, actions, and so on omitted.  The goal is to use the keywords you’ve gathered from your investigation to connect the dots and make inferences about the case.  In doing so, there are also some helpful hints to make sure you’re working with a full deck.  For starters, the game will show whether you’ve found all the available keywords for a particular deducktion, so you know if you have to go back to prowling the office prior to drawing up your conclusions.  You’ll also be given an approximation of how many blanks are incorrect, so you have a bit of guidance as to how far off base you are.  Lastly, you don’t have to fill in all the blanks at once, so you’re free to dive into a deducktion, note down a few things you know for sure, and then continue looking for leads.

I really like the deducktion system.  While it can be a bit overwhelming at first to be presented with a sentence missing half its words, I always found that things quickly began to fall into place.  Poring over documents for evidence made me feel like a real detective, and piecing together the perfect conclusion often came with the cry of, “OHHHHH THAT’S IT!” that I expect from the best puzzlers.  Sometimes the evidence will be right there in front of you, while other times going through a process of elimination is necessary to find all the right answers.  However, the answers always make logical sense based on the data Eugene has gathered, which is absolutely necessary and welcomed in a game of this ilk.

That being said, it’s important to pay attention to all conversations for clues, as there are a few times where important details won’t get noted down.  For instance, an early conversation hints at who Eugene’s client is, but then you have to go through a bunch of other detective work before making the corresponding deducktion, by which point I had forgotten about that conversation, had no notes about it, and only got the answer through guesswork.  It’s strange that Eugene is so meticulous about noting down physical evidence, but tends to miss out on verbal clues.  The good news is this only happened once in the game, with every other deducktion flowing much more smoothly.  Sometimes I needed to access the in-game hint system to get a better sense of what direction to go, but I never needed the answer explicitly spelled out for me.

That hint system is also pretty well implemented, designed to point you in the direction of the solution rather than just giving it right to you.  It can be a bit annoying if you’re truly stumped on a deducktion as I was early on, as the game’s vague hints about “make sure you talk to everyone” and “have you looked at everything in the office yet?” weren’t particularly helpful given my meticulous playstyle up to that point.  Despite this, there were nonetheless times where it was just the thing I needed to have all the pieces click into place, and it was always rewarding to feel like I arrived at the correct solution on my own with a bit of help, rather than the game just telling me what it was and shuttling me on.

I also want to shout out the visuals, which opt for a Paper Mario-inspired mixture of 2D hand-drawn cutouts for characters mixed with 3D environments to navigate.  It’s a great look, which allows the cast to be expressive and entertaining in a way that simply wouldn’t work with 3D models, while also keeping the environments clean and easy to explore.  Additionally, critical moments in the case are punctuated by short cutscenes, and while they’re mostly slideshows of different scenes unfolding, they still add a lot to the story being told and help to crystallize the deducktions you’ve made up to that point.

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is cute, quirky, and cozy, and while it isn’t without fault, I still got a lot out of it for what it was.  It’s a short game, with my 100% playthrough only lasting about two and a half hours, but it uses its time well, telling a fun mystery tale full of plenty of opportunities for the player to flex their deductive reasoning.  A fun detail is that – while the game is linear and you’re not allowed to advance until you’ve drawn all the correct conclusions – the ending actually allows you to choose what to do with the Salami Bandit, deciding whether to send them to prison or let them walk free, complete with a pre-credits stats sheet showing what percentage of players made the same choice you did.  It’s clearly a game that had a lot of love and care put into its creation, and it shows every time a character opens their mouth or a deducktion is made.  There’s already been a sequel game announced, and it says a lot that – while I appreciated the brevity of this installment – I’m more than ready to dive back in for another round.  This is one case that’s well worth quacking.

8.5/10