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Duck Detective: The Secret Salami Review



Platforms: Switch, Xbox One, Windows, Linux, Xbox Series X/S, Mac

This is a game about a grizzled, washed up, detective who is trying to solve a case to distract from his miserable and lonely life, also...he is a duck. 'Duck Detective: the secret salami' is a point and click mystery game by indie developer 'Happy Broccoli'. It is short, but engaging and provided a window into the life of hardened detective Eugene McQuacklin, a character I would love to see more of in the future!

The first thing that struck me about this game was the music. It has a jazz score that seems like it is pulled straight out of a classic Noir film. It not only added to tone that the game was going for, but also created a cozy gaming vibe. The voice acting is also perfect. The voice of Eugene McQuacklin was one of my favourite parts of the game. The voice actor plays the role with such sincerity which really adds to the comedy. The dead pan and serious delivery is reminiscent of Lesley Nielsen in 'Airplane' and makes the humour of a gritty, depressed duck land perfectly every time. 

The art is also beautiful. The Paper Mario style characters and really endearing to look at and there are a couple of cut scenes I really enjoyed. In fact I enjoyed the cut scenes so much, I found myself wishing for a 'Duck Detective' animated series. The way the characters waddle around as paper cutouts I found really funny and reminded me a little of South Park. The character designs are filled with personality and I loved each quirky character.


I would now like to talk about my absolute favourite thing about 'Duck Detective', which is the writing. I really feel the writers understood the source material they were parodying and the jokes were well written and almost always got an audible laugh from me. The joke that I really enjoyed was that Eugene is addicted to bread and there is subtext that his bread addiction is what led to the breakdown in his marriage. Also on the loading screens there are fake facts such as 'Ducks are the only birds that can fly backwards' and 'Ducks are 70% more likely to solve crimes'. If you don't like puns though I would give this game a miss, but if you do like puns you'll find yourself 'Quacking' up at each joke.

The gameplay of 'Duck Detective' is pretty easy to wrap your head around and involves you finding clues, talking to suspects and trying to piece together what happened in a kind of 'Mad Libs' style. When you meet a character you can inspect them and it gives off a Sherlock Holmes vibe, where you can deduce different things about them from their appearance. Then you question them about pieces of evidence you found and about the other characters. You then take all this information and do a kind of 'fill in the blanks' puzzle to work out what has happening. I did really like the hook of the game and it made me feel accomplished when I put things together. 


My only real criticisms of the game was that it was short and I could have done with a couple more environments to explore. I appreciate that it is such a small team and for an indie game I expect it to be on the shorter side, but I did get to the end and think 'oh, it is over already'. You do spend most of the game wandering around the same office, and I think spending more time in other locations would've spiced things up a little.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with 'Duck Detective: the secret salami' and I really hope this is the start of an ongoing series, because I think they have made such a great character with Eugene McQuacklin and I would be excited to see him solve more cases. Although the game was short, I was engaged the full time and felt invested in the world and for the price of the game it felt fair. The stand out positives for me were the writing, the acting and the music. If you have an evening where you want to spend a couple of hours getting lost in a cute/funny little mystery then 'Duck Detective: the secret salami' is the perfect game for you. I would give it a 7.5/10 and cannot wait to see what Happy Broccoli do next.

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