Game: Duck Detective: The Secret Salami
Genre: Puzzle, Adventure
System: Nintendo Switch (also available on Steam (Windows) & macOS)
Developer|Publisher: Happy Broccoli Games
Age Rating: US E+ | EU 3+
Price: UK £8.99 | US $9.99 | EU € 9,99
Release Date: May 23rd, 2024
A review code was provided, and many thanks to Future Friends Games.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a silly noir-style detective story about a duck on the hunt for truth. During the gameplay, you need to solve puzzles, interview suspects, and figure out who is responsible for stealing lunches.
The World’s Most Adorable Detective
I am a big fan of goofy or comedic detective stories, like the Frog Detective series and Chicken Police – Paint It Red! So when I saw Duck Detective come across the LadiesGamers list of codes available for review, I jumped at this silly little game. It features a down-on-his-luck detective, Eugene McQuacklin, who recently divorced due to his white-bread addiction. He’s so broke he can barely afford bus fare when he gets a call about a lunch thief. You need to interview suspects, study them, hack into computers, solve puzzles, and more in order to get to the truth.
Every time you get a new clue, interview someone new and interact with objects, you will get new words, and the words are used to fill in Deducktions and organizing all the information you have gathered to put the clues together properly and finish the case. You will get Mad Libs-style outlines with missing words, and you will have to fill in all the info correctly to move on.
It will take a detective who is willing to dig deep to solve the crime, and he might even uncover more than he bargained for.
The Puzzles Aren’t As Silly as You Might Expect
When I first sat down with Duck Detective, I was expecting very simple puzzles for children. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the little bit of challenge in several of them; you need to be able to interpret the information around you to solve everything you need to and complete the mystery.
While the puzzles aren’t extremely difficult, they aren’t super simple either, and it felt like a fun balance for a cute childs game. As an adult, I found the mystery to be both compelling and interesting. On top of the fun mystery, the characters were also interesting, well-drawn, and fun to interact with. The mystery starts as silly and gets a little more serious as the game continues, but it still manages to keep its amazing sense of humor intact.
The best examples might be the fun “facts” on the loading screens, including things like “Ducks were the first species to abolish the monarchy.” I found most of these “duck facts” to be so funny that I started reading them out loud to my husband, just so he could join in on the fun.
Some Other Good Things About This Fowl Case
The voice acting, sound design, and music were on point in Duck Detective: The Secret Salami. It was charming, full voice acted, and the voices were fantastic. While it wasn’t traditionally animated, it has a Paper Mario kind of feel to the characters that feel less like they were cutting corners and more like an aesthetic choice that was adorable and appealing.
I love the way Duck Detective sounded; he had a gritty, noir detective voice that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in The Maltese Falcon. It was extremely polished and a very fun game to play through.
Some Grim Reality for the Duck Sleuth
Overall, I didn’t have too many issues while I was playing Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, but I did have a couple. I had a little bit of trouble with one of the puzzles because I thought it was a little bit of a stretch, but I found most of the puzzles to be well put together.
There was also an instance when Sophie left the front desk, and you can kind of get stuck behind it; I got stuck there for long enough I considered starting the game from the beginning to be able to move. Thankfully, after about five minutes of wiggling around the Joy-Con, I finally got my feathered friend out of the bind he was in.
There was also the Investigation segment, which required you to look at someone with a magnifying glass. When you do, the Duck Detective zooms in on a portion of his subject, looking for things that will give us clues, like what a person is wearing, what is written on a computer screen, etc. Some of these clues had to be lined up perfectly for them to catch so I could interact with them; the hitboxes on the clues were a little strange.
It was kind of frustrating a couple of times, especially when I knew I had found the clue that the game wanted me to find. Then, I had to swirl the cursor around it to figure out what direction it wanted me to approach the clue from to get it to trigger correctly.
Overall, though, I didn’t have any bugs or issues with Duck Detective: The Secret Salami and I enjoyed my time with it quite a bit. I think my biggest complaint was definitely how short it was. I hope we get more mysteries with the Detective, or I’ll be super sad.
Conclusion
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is one of the best kid-friendly games I’ve ever played. It seems like something that would be super fun to play with some older kids who are comfortable reading and with deduction. While I had some issues with the game, overall, it was such a fun experience. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami has good music, amazing voice acting, fun interactions, and just a good storyline and feel. I love this from my bill down to my webbed feet!
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up:
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