Duck Detective: The Secret Salami takes the hard-boiled detective trope and makes it quack

When your salami is stolen, who do you name? The Duck Detective! Hooked on bread, newly divorced, and unable to pay hire, the Duck Detective should tackle much less esteemed jobs to get again on his webbed toes. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, launched on Could 23 by Glad Broccoli Video games, turns the down-on-his-luck, hard-boiled detective trope on its head — then makes it quack.

Duck Detective begins like several good noir detective movie; really, it basically is a playable detective movie. The sport might be accomplished in simply three hours, making it a type of video games you’re prone to play by way of it in a single sitting. You play because the Duck Detective, whose first thriller is to seek out out what occurred final night time. As soon as that’s settled, he can get to his shopper. The one drawback there may be that he doesn’t know who known as within the lunch room thriller: Who stole the salami?

As soon as he’s on web site on the workplace, the Duck Detective should interview suspects, spot hidden clues, and pull collectively the main points. He’ll observe what he’s present in an in-game pocket book that accommodates key phrases associated to the interviews and clues; to unravel the thriller, you’ve obtained to fill within the blanks with these key phrases, à la Case of the Golden Idol. (This gameplay begins from the primary scene, while you’re determining what occurred final night time, which serves as a simplified tutorial.)

What the Duck Detective finds within the workplace is a dramatic, foolish, and fairly sophisticated thriller to slowly untangle. Sure, there’s the lacking salami, however there’s a lot extra: damage emotions, jealous co-workers, a canceled Halloween occasion, and a global conspiracy. For essentially the most half, the workplace employees are fairly apathetic to the Duck Detective’s presence, plainly answering his questions and getting on with their rote company work — till they now not can conceal from his (really fairly succesful) deduction expertise.

You’ll proceed this fill-in-the-blanks gameplay for your complete sport, the situations getting extra advanced with every thrust of the story. There are lots of phrases to choose up, a few of that are clear misdirection. It’s tempting, when stumped, to simply take random phrases and slot them in, however that will get irritating. Whenever you don’t know the remedy, it feels extra rewarding to return to the setting and dig deeper into the workplace. I can see the place the sport’s backtracking may really feel grating to some, nevertheless it’s not how I skilled the sport: It’s so charming and quick that nothing overstayed its welcome.

All through all of it, Duck Detective is a foolish little thriller sport that leans into the absurdity of all of it. There’s a button to make him quack. Numerous pretend duck details, like the truth that geese sleep with one eye open to maintain look ahead to crime, or that they’ll fly backwards. I discovered myself laughing by way of a day of quacking and clue-finding, essentially the most I’ve laughed enjoying a sport in a while. The factor is, I each want there was extra to play whereas additionally loving that it’s a brief, fully-contained expertise. Duck Detective may simply flip into an episodic franchise, like a detective TV present, with the duck fixing an entire bunch of crimes. In fact, Glad Broccoli Video games hasn’t given any indication that’s the case, however right here’s hoping.

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami was launched Could 23 on Nintendo Change, Home windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Sequence X. The sport was reviewed on a Steam Deck utilizing a obtain code supplied by Glad Broccoli Video games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media could earn commissions for merchandise bought through affiliate hyperlinks. You will discover extra details about epicgamejourney’s ethics coverage right here.