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Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping brings us back to the world introduced in Duck Detective: The Secret Salami and, well, it’s exactly what you’d expect the adventure game to be. This is a short, bite-sized adventure with colorful characters, and it ends it feeling rather cozy due to it being a rather laid back approach to sometimes low stakes mysteries. It’s a good thing! Not every title needs to be a 40-hour epic, and Happy Broccoli Games again created a captivating story to savor over the course of an afternoon.

Eugene McQuacklin, who I’ll just go ahead and call Duck Detective from here on out since everyone else does, is down on his luck as the sequel begins. He’s living in Freddy Frederson’s spare room, still is addicted to bread, and his ex-wife wants nothing to do with him and won’t return his calls. He can’t wallow, however, as Freddy is dragging him on a glamping trip with his new girlfriend to grounds near a potentially haunted asylum. (He already paid for it!) Forced along, the detective finds either ghosts or haunting the area, or there’s a decidedly more dastardly explanation for unsettling behavior. It’s up to us to investigate again.

Aside from Freddy, the alligator that got Duck Detective goat’s in the first game, tagging along, Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping proceeds pretty much identically to the first game. A mystery will arise. You’ll need to put together deducktions, based on observations, interviewing people, and interacting with the environment, to get topics to feed into a Mad-Libs style statement figuring out what happened. Solving one mystery opens up the next, advancing the story and granting access to new areas.

What I loved about Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping that is unique to this entry is honestly the increased interactions with Freddy. The Duck Detective is a prickly sort of character that feels plucked from a noir novella and dumped into what is, at a glance, an adorable world that includes a lot of quirky characters. By adding Freddy as a more present foil, we get to appreciate the ways in which this more goofy, nerdy, and typical person interacts with this serious investigator.

However, I also appreciate that despite being cozy, The Ghost of Glamping continues the tradition of Duck Detective actually including some dark and mature themes just like The Secret Salami. While it’s played for laughs and silliness since it is just bread, the titular detective does have an addiction. His relationship with his former lover is an issue. There are not-great people here trying to take advantage of and hurt others. 

Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping offers more of the same and, in the case of this series, that’s exactly what Happy Broccoli Games should be doing. It’s a welcome addition to our gaming libraries! The characters are still incredibly entertaining. The gameplay is sound. The narrative is engaging. It feels like another episode of something we all already agreed that we enjoyed, and I appreciate the relief of knowing there’s a consistent series that will regularly deliver a certain type of enjoyable adventure for an evening.

Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is available for the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC. 

The post Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping Builds on the Original Game appeared first on Siliconera.

I know a game captivated me when I find myself wishing there was more to it. It usually doesn’t mean I literally want it to be longer, but rather that I find myself utterly charmed with the experience. However, when it comes to Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, I genuinely want to spend more time with Eugene McQuacklin, crack more cases, and find out more about the enigmatic and dapper detective. At its core, the story presented in the game is as simple as its title implies. Eugene is going through a rough patch, with business going as worst as it’s ever been and no work prospects on the horizon. That is until he receives a call to investigate a salami-related robbery turned conspiracy.

My first impression of the game was of total delight upon finding out that all dialogue is fully voiced, with veteran voice actor Sean Chiplock giving life to our protagonist Eugene with a rough caricature of a performance, among many other recognizable voices. The comedic tone is immediately set, with some of the tropes it tackles riffing on typical hardboiled detective drama stories. As an example, Eugene is addicted to bread crumbs, a very unhealthy food for ducks, with the detective himself commenting on the shame he feels for his habit and how it damaged his relationship to his ex. If you enjoy this type of humor, you’re in for a good time, as the game delves into plenty of classic tropes of mystery stories coupled with more topical and modern topics.

After arriving to the scene of the crime, a bus company, Eugene gets to work. His first step is figure out who hired him to investigate the disappearance (and reappearance) of a piece of expensive charcuterie, and unveil the overarching conspiracy lurking in the shadows. The gameplay loop consists of talking to suspects and asking hard hitting questions. By talking to characters and addressing the mysteries available, players get a set of words that they can use to fill in the blanks to make “de-duck-tions.” These deducktions start easy, with Eugene needing to develop profiles and figure out the identities of everyone in the offices, as the characters are not particularly cooperative. Shortly after this introduction, the game throws more words and ideas to use your skills, and it can get somewhat tricky as the plot thickens.

However, there is never an unfair difficulty spike or a moment in which the mystery or any given question feels unintuitive. While there were moments when I felt a bit unsure of what the answer at hand was, the nature of the deducktions helped me piece together the puzzle. It's possible that the number of information and words you eventually get to handle, coupled with a few red herrings and character relationships clashing, might feel confusing. Which is why you have to pay attention to what you’re being asking to unveil at any given time.

I would say that the game is on the easier side, but it never reveals each mystery before you put it together yourself. In a way, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami feels like the vertical slice of a bigger game, a self-contained Ace Attorney case of sorts. In between deducktions and asking questions, you also have some investigative parts. These are sections in which you observe a character or a piece of the environment up close with your trusty magnifying glass. The art style here shifts between a more complex and detailed one when looking up close and personal, and the regular style the game uses.

The premise of the mystery in Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is simple and lighthearted, and it is never uninteresting. It helps a lot that the cast of wacky characters have very marked personalities and fun relationships. By the end of the game, I came to care for Eugene and the great cast of the game. The game lasts roughly between 2 to 3 hours, and it is the perfect length for the story it aims to tell. However... I want more! Considering how the game ends, I can imagine seeing more of Eugene McQuacklin, maybe with a new sidekick and putting his life back together. And I think the world in general deserves more Duck Detective.

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is readily available for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam.

The post Review: Duck Detective: The Secret Salami Is a Short and Fun Case appeared first on Siliconera.