Duck Detective: The Secret Salami review — It's time to quack the case Ducktective

Nothing is quite so charming as a duck that is a detective, which is all it really takes to persuade me to play this game—yes, I am that simple. We have had many a puzzle game on GamingTrend, so each ends up vying for my attention. A recipe for success often means a strong sense of style and well-thought-out puzzles; they don’t need to be mind-bending and quite so elaborate as, say, the recent Blue Prince—check out our review here—so when I picked up Duck Detective and was posed with the premise of finding out who stole an employee’s lunch, I understood that this was going to be more of a fun and lax experience, and indeed it was.

The Secret Salami introduces Eugene McQuacklin, a lowly detective that has fallen from grace. His wife has filed for a divorce, he can’t pay his rent, and he has a crippling addiction to bread. Right off the bat, Duck Detective is hilarious in how dramatic and silly it comes off, which is paired nicely with Sean Chiplock's deep and painstaking voice acting. It fits perfectly into the ‘Duck Noir’ the game is trying to create, comedically having the mystery set when it’s raining and the initial introduction to scenes being in black and white. This drama is all painted with a Paper Mario aesthetic where all the characters are like stickers, which juxtaposes its wannabe dark and mysterious vibe of the Duck Detective to a T.

The voice acting goodness doesn’t end with Chiplock, with The Secret Salami being fully voice acted with familiar faces like Brian David Gilbert and Lizzie Freeman doing an amazing job in making the game’s dialogue even more hilarious. The game only has a handful of characters to interact with, but that only made for a more memorable experience. It allows the player to get to know the relationships between employees and the quirks they bring to the workspace, which helps in unraveling the mystery.

The Duck Detective receives an anonymous call asking him to solve a case at BearBus—a bus company—investigating a stolen lunch and the identity of the elusive Salami Bandit. It’s all very simple and easy to follow at first, easing the player into its gameplay if you’re unfamiliar with this genre. However, the story does ramp up and provides some twists, misleading the player a couple of times in order to keep its brief story fresh and interesting. It even has some flexibility in the outcome of the mystery; it’s only a simple pick this option or that option, but at least it opens some discussion.

These aspects were quite surprising to me, as the narrative seemed to be very self-contained, with only a handful of characters and one building to explore in the game. It’s kept brief and concise in a way I appreciate, and despite criticisms that the game is too short, it was a wonderful little package to unravel in one session after work; it didn’t need to be anything more than that.

As for the gameplay, it’s pretty standard and expected for a simple and lighthearted game like this. The game even begins with two options of how to play the game, Detective’ mode and Story’ mode; the former gives you fewer details when getting an answer wrong, and the latter gives you more support. It’s a nice touch if you’re looking for an effortless experience. The bulk of the puzzle mechanics is a fill-in-the-blank system. You observe your surroundings and interact with objects and talk to people; these can prompt highlighted words to be added to your notebook, which you then use in a fill-in-the-blank to arrive at a deduction. It’s very simple to understand; the game provides you with a couple of basic scenarios to show how it works. My gripe came from the fill-in-the-blank statements; they would sometimes be worded quite clumsily, so I would stumble on my way to get the answer. This may have been a ‘me’ issue, but it was this paired with another frustration I had that made Duck Detective’s deductions fall a bit flat. 

Expanding on the use of talking to suspects and analyzing objects, Duck Detective can use his magnifying glass to glean the smaller details from objects. For example, you can see marked dates on a calendar or open tabs on a computer. This mechanic can only be used on characters where you can pinpoint stains on their clothing and the emotions on their faces. This was a fun mechanic, and the detailed portraits that revealed eye bags and crumbs at a mouth’s edge made the characters feel more alive than just a cartoonish sticker.

The aforementioned feature that paired with my frustration with the way statements were worded is how the clues often don’t cut a clear path to the answer. This issue cropped up a couple of times, where I had gathered all the keywords, but they hadn’t pointed me to the conclusion I needed. A prime example would be around the midgame point where you find out why there is such a focus on salami. It was annoying to say the least and ended up with me just randomly picking words until it made sense. This usually worked even if you didn’t have a complete picture of what was going on, as the provided words would naturally direct you to a conclusion. Linking to this is the tip system if you’re feeling stuck, you can ask the Duck Detective to point you in the right direction. But if you’re playing in Detective mode, he doesn’t provide many details, often just a simple ‘you should look at all the objects.’ Thanks, I guess. Because of how short of a game The Secret Salami is—with a run time of about 3 hours—these aspects unfortunately stuck out to me when I had finished the game.