Review: Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a ducking good time

Listen, I’m always going to be a sucker for games that let me run around as animals. It’s just a simple fact of my personality. Add in a detective hat and I’m more than happy to waddle around in a game. 

Though, I can’t say I was excepting our duck boy, Eugene McQuacklin, to be a penniless divorcee addicted to toast… 

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami

I spoiled the opener a bit in my own opener. You play as a Duck Detective down on his luck. You’ve been recently divorced and just splurged on a loaf of bread. I’m not going to judge. I, too, am addicted to bread.

As a Duck Detective working out of your one-room apartment, you can imagine that you’re desperate for any case. Lucky for us, we get a call from BearBus where an employee wants us to solve their case. 

A case that takes place at a bus station office must be pretty important. But, alas, we’re here to solve who is stealing our client’s lunch. And the kicker? We never asked for our client’s name. I’m starting to see why we might have money troubles. 

So, when we get on the scene, we’re not even sure who we’re supposed to talk to. But, what qualifies more to quack the case than wearing a detective hat? 

Normally, I go into a bit of a spiel about how this goes down, but because this is a game surrounding uncovering mysteries, I can’t really speak candidly without spoiling things. So, let’s just say that while searching for clues as to who our client is and who is stealing their lunch… we uncovered some actual crimes. 

I am vengeance, I am night, I am Eugene McQuacklin!

The way that you go about finding information comes in a few different ways. There are dots around the office space and above the employees that denote that you can investigate these areas. 

Sometimes, it’s as simple as talking to someone. Once you start finding clues, you can come back and inquire about those clues to the individual person. The other way is by looking more closely at something. 

This portion brings in your magnifying glass and you wave it over the subject that you want more information on. It’s kind of interesting because a much more detailed image is drawn beneath. So, when you run your magnifying glass over something, you see a more complex image underneath and find your clues there. 

As you talk to people, you’ll learn certain keywords that are collected separately. You can find them in your notebook where you’ll find a map and a list of employees. 

I shudder to bring up this comparison, but when I played Turlock Holmes, the idea was to fill in the blank spots with keywords to uncover the truth of a statement. This is the same principle. You’ll use the clues and words you’ve gathered together to fill in pre-written statements with blanks for key information.

For instance, if you said that Mrs. Peacock did it with the candlestick in the living room. The name, the weapon, and the room would all be redacted and you’d have to fill in those spots with your compiled info. 

It’s the same principle with one minor caveat. This game will tell you if there are words that are incorrect. It won’t tell you which ones, but you can kind of brute force the answer if you have enough clues you’re sure about by just subbing in words til it works. 

I am the terror that flaps in the night!

You’ll meet a host of interesting animal characters, engage in some espionage, and crack a couple of cases along the way. Overall, the game is a lot of fun, but I do have a couple of qualms.

The game isn’t very long, only about 1.5 hours. So, it’s not a game that you’re going to be spending an evening with. Personally, I would have liked to see him cover a few different cases, but this game chose to make the mundane case into a bigger story. 

It’s a fun game, but I enjoy the silliness of finding a lunch thief. It might not have had as much depth, but I wouldn’t have minded a few of those silly cases. 

The other thing I had some issue with is that I felt some of the puzzles relied on you to just… guess. This is probably a ‘me’ problem because when I figured the puzzle out, I could see where it was trying to go in hindsight. But, some clues aren’t in your face or are more subtle that you don’t realize it’s supposed to be a clue. 

As far as the atmosphere is concerned, it was all well done. The 2D quality of the characters is charming and the bluesy jazz that played lent itself to that noir feeling. This is fully voice-acted, so I really appreciate the effort put in. 

I’d recommend it if you can spare the ten bucks and I hope they make another chapter. Though, preferably one with more than one case. 
If you want to try out Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, you can get it on Steam, Nintendo Switch, or Xbox for $9.99. And if you want to know more about Turlock Holmes, you can check out our review on it at your own peril.