When I started reviewing Duck Detective – The Secret Salami, my initial thought was wondering why they didn’t call it “Duck-tective,” until I remembered that it was a joke from Gravity Falls. I quickly came to learn why—this is a no-nonsense game that doesn’t have time for silly puns. Okay, that’s not entirely true; it’s a some-nonsense game.
Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with Duck Detective – The Secret Salami. I had seen little bits and pieces of it floating around on TikTok, and I figured it would be your average lighthearted, interactive novel-style game not dissimilar to Phoenix Wright. But as I kept playing, I became more and more endeared and engaged with its silly yet captivating story.
Duck Detective – The Secret Salami begins unassumingly enough. You play as a Duck who is a Detective called to investigate a mysterious lunch disappearance at a local bus dispatch station. However, things quickly become more sinister as a mysterious Salami Bandit seems to be plaguing the office at every turn. It’s up to the Duck Detective to get to the bottom of what’s really going on at this office.
For a relatively small game, Duck Detective – The Secret Salami really delivers a lot of story with a surprising number of twists and turns. Obviously, I won’t say much more because I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun of a good mystery, but I can safely say every time I thought I knew what was going on, the game threw me for a loop. Duck Detective – The Secret Salami is a thoroughly engaging story backed by fun and colourful characters—namely the Duck Detective himself, who acts as a serious foil to the story’s sillier nature.
“For a relatively small game, Duck Detective – The Secret Salami really delivers a lot of story with a surprising number of twists and turns.”
The gameplay is a mix of simple mechanics and somewhat obtuse puzzle-solving that fits the mysterious theme of the game but often makes it somewhat frustrating to experience. The game plays like a somewhat simplified version of Return of the Obra Dinn, with the comparison of such even being featured in the game’s store description.
Throughout the game, players will be confronted with small mysteries, the crucial information to solving them being blanks in bigger sentences. As the player talks to witnesses and examines both the characters and the various crime scenes, they’ll be given keywords with which to fill in those blanks and come to crucial deductions in the case.
It’s fairly straightforward gameplay that mostly involves talking to everyone about every character or thing the game allows you to talk to them about and then using your own basic reasoning ability to figure it out. However, one issue I had with Duck Detective – The Secret Salami was just how much it expects the player to know what’s going on and isn’t remotely interested in helping them figure it out.
Part of the problem is actually one of the game’s positives—Duck Detective – The Secret Salami is incredibly well-written and consistently funny and charming. All of the characters are adorable little goobers, from the overworked Customer Support cat to the dorky but ultimately ineffectual Office Organizer alligator. They all bring the game and its story to life in an incredibly playful way.
The problem, however, is the game’s writing and story lean a bit too far into the charm and humour in such a way that sometimes, trying to gather crucial information about a current mystery can be a bit vague. There were several moments where I was fairly certain I had the answer to a de-ducktion, only to be told two or more things were wrong and I had to either guess at words or names until I figured it out.
“Duck Detective – The Secret Salami is a thoroughly engaging story backed by fun and colourful characters…”
Furthermore, Duck Detective – The Secret Salami does have something of a hint system, but it’s fairly abysmal, usually just having the Duck Detective repeat that players should scan the area for clues or talk to witnesses about things and not really steering them in a clear direction. I can understand a mystery game not holding the player’s hand all the way or even wanting to give away the answer too readily, but I think the game either needed to be a bit more clear in the clues it was giving players or have a more concise hint system.
Visually, Duck Detective – The Secret Salami is as simple and charming as the rest of the game. It utilizes a fairly minimalistic style, with characters resembling paper cutouts moving around the basic 3D environments. However, it expands on this simplicity in cute and funny ways, namely with the examination function of the game. When players examine a character, they’re given a cute, simplistic rendering of that character.
Dragging their magnifying glass over the character will reveal much more specific details—like how the alligator’s little jagged-line mouth becomes a bunch of highly-rendered teeth, or the Duck Detectives’ adorably vacant cartoon eyes become sunken and exhausted upon greater examination. It’s all the little ways Duck Detective – The Secret Salami expands on its visuals that add so much personality to the game and its world.
The audio is equally top-notch, with almost every line of dialogue being fully voice-acted, and the team really brought their A-game to this. It’s goofy and cheesy in an absolutely lovable way, from the jokey situational dialogue to the way the Duck Detective keeps trying to narrate as if it’s a Film Noir. The music adds a sombre, jazzy vibe to the affair, expanding on the Noir theme and acting as a contrast to the rest of the game’s silliness.
For what it is, and at a modest asking price I would recommend Duck Detective – The Secret Salami, even though the game fully advertises itself as a two to three-hour experience, I was a little disappointed when the game was over. I really wanted to see a fully fleshed-out world starring the Duck Detective.
Also, there’s a dedicated quack button. Do with that information what you will.
