Duck Detective: The Secret Salami

5 July, 2024 - 4:24 pm by Drew Sherratt
About 10 mins to read
Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch

I’ve admitted my love for detective shows and crime dramas here before at VGamingNews. From an early age, my dad instilled in me a deep passion for Frost, Prime Suspect and Law & Order, and sometimes, when I’m lucky, that love crosses over with my gaming obsession, offering me a chance to become a grizzled sleuth for a couple of hours. The latest opportunity comes in the shape of Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, a cosy, detective noir (if there can be such a thing), brought to you by Happy Broccoli Games, the German development team behind the popular Kraken Academy!!.

You play as the titular gumshoe, Eugene McQuacklin, a down and out ex-cop who’s going through a divorce and struggling to make ends meet as a private investigator. Thankfully, it’s not long until a call comes in about a potential case – it may look like a simple whodunnit on the surface, but things begin to unravel into something much more devious as McQuacklin starts to tug on the threads of mystery.

At A Glance

Duck Detective
+ Quirky, over the top characters with great voice-acting + Bright, crisp visuals + Fun detective mechanics	Positives
Negatives	– At 2-3 hours, you’re gonna want more – Some puzzle solutions are a little vague
Overall	8 /10
Played On	Nintendo Switch
Also Available On	PC, Xbox Series X\|S, Xbox One
Find out about our scoring policy here.

So, what is this blockbuster case that McQuacklin is called in to solve? Well, that would be a sinister case of lunch theft at the offices of cross-country bus service, BearBus. (More Mundane Mallard than Maltese Falcon, amirite?) But, as with any detective story worth its bread, ahem, I mean salt, there’s much more going on at BearBus than meets the eye. McQuacklin is dragged into a deeper plot surrounding the bickering employees and the sinister Salami Bandit, whose true motives remain a mystery until the very crescendo of the tale.

The main players in the story are the beleaguered staff of the BearBus company, from the drivers and customer service staff, all the way up to the branch manager himself. The cast is wonderfully put together, and each member feels like a finely caricatured office stereotype, intertwined nicely with an archetype from a well worn mystery story. Truly, Happy Broccoli has done a great job of making a noir plot out of office politics turned up to 11. We have the underappreciated Customer Service call handler, Laura Angst, a cat who works all hours to get ahead, only to be overlooked for the utterly incompetent but lovable crocodile in Operations, Freddy Frederson. Is Laura’s jealousy a motive for what’s going on in the office, or is Freddy’s bumbling idiocy all a ruse? Who can say?

Underpinning the goofy cast of characters is some really fun voice work, which really helps pull you into the tale. I had originally expected Duck Detective to be a text-only adventure, and was so pleasantly surprised when Sean Chiplock delivered his first line as McQuacklin, offering the exact tone of square-jawed, cynicism you come to expect from a trenchcoat and fedora wearing gumshoe. The entire cast does a fantastic job of bringing their characters to life, but I think I most enjoyed Brian David Gilbert as the thoroughly oblivious Freddy. The music does a fine job of setting the scene too, with a score made up of melancholy lounge jazz, exactly as you’d expect for a smooth detective noir.

The entire game is wonderfully drawn in a bright and playful style, and the visuals make the world of Duck Detective a joy to explore. While the environments are portrayed with clean 3D models in a simple isometric view, the characters are given the Paper Mario treatment, with their images drawn on either side of a flat piece of card, flipping back and forth as they move around. It’s a charming, if not entirely original style, and evokes a feeling in me like the board game Cluedo. There’s something about the cardboard characters moving around a 3D space that makes the game feel like a group of children hopping little cutouts around a game board, babbling out the ridiculous plot as they go along. If this was intentional then it’s a stroke of absolute genius, and if not, it just goes to show the kind of childlike joy that’s bundled up in this game.

From a gameplay perspective, you’ll walk McQuacklin through the BearBus offices, interrogating staff and casting a keen eye over the suspects and their surroundings with your trusty magnifying glass. As you do so, you’ll pick up observations which you’ll store in your notebook as keywords, and later use to break down each facet of the case. These keywords fit into ‘Deducktions’; plot points laid out as statements with vital words missing, almost like a Mad Lib. It’s your job to use your investigative skills to find all of the required words and figure out which names, items and actions fill each of the gaps in the sentences.

If you get the word combinations wrong, you’ll be given a rundown of how many of your words are incorrect (but not which ones), encouraging you to reexamine the evidence and see what you might have gotten wrong. There’s a hint system included should you get stuck, and if that still doesn’t help, you can switch to ‘Story Mode’, which almost entirely takes out the challenge and lets you quickly move on with the plot. The mechanics are wonderfully implemented. Whilst incredibly simple, they really helped give the sense of you snooping around and piecing together snippets of information to help solve a larger question about the case.

Once you do get all of the words in the correct places, McQuacklin adds his seal of approval and gives you a brief rundown of the plot point, helping to smarten up the player about the finer significance to the story that they may not have entirely understood. In key moments, you’re even treated to beautiful comic book renditions of McQuacklin’s findings, perfectly playing off our goosey gumshoe as a feathered Hercule Poirot, orating the specifics to the onlooking cast of bemused characters. Overall, you’re treated to a tale that’s really well put together, bringing together a funny script and a handful of character arcs that tie into a larger web of mystery incredibly effectively. The storytelling in Duck Detective is everything a detective drama should be, and I tip my fedora to Happy Broccoli for absolutely nailing the execution. Sure, not all of the puzzle aspects are immediately clear, but the regular summations help you understand what’s going on and help keep you engaged, which I greatly appreciated.

While there’s no elephant character in the game, there is one in the room, and that’s the runtime of Duck Detective, which is a poultry 2-3 hours all-in. I had hoped that we might get to solve a couple of cases as McQuacklin, and perhaps see the culmination of some overarching plot, but the mystery of the Salami Bandit is, sadly, a standalone tale. There’s a huge raft of players who wouldn’t ever consider buying a game that’s so short, but honestly, I was in no way disappointed by the experience of Duck Detective. The game is wonderfully put together and Happy Broccoli has done plenty to justify the asking price – I quite simply enjoyed it so much that I was left wanting more. If this is the start of a series of short games starring McQuacklin, then I’m down like eider, baby.

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a send up of the detective noir, and it’s executed almost to perfection. The simple, yet highly effective mechanics do a tremendous job of steering you through the case, which is filled with engaging characters and bolstered by some wonderful voice-acting. The bright and playful visuals are adorable and almost belie the well-written mystery that plays out. Hampered only by its short runtime of 2-3 hours, I dearly hope this is just the first of many sleuthing stories for Eugene McQuacklin. Play it at the risk of being left with a serious hunger for bread… and justice.