I love ducks. I love salami. Clearly, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami has somehow hit a weird cross section of things that I am interested in. This narrative-driven detective game has you becoming the Duck Detective, who has run out of money due to his bread addiction, and is now taking on one big case in the hopes of having enough money for rent.
Your case is sort of two-part. You’ll need to find out who has been stealing lunches from a local bus company, but also about the various inner workings of this bus company, as it clearly isn’t doing well itself. Everything is a mystery; even who hired you, giving you challenge after challenge to take on. A lot of the detective work is through talking to other characters, but there are also little activities that can give you more info.
You see, your detective book allows you to solve mysteries by filling blank spots in with words. To get these words, you need to investigate. One way of investigating is going towards any person or item that you can take a closer look at, which will then pull words that can be used later in your detective book. You’ll need to do this to figure out what people’s names are and why specific things have happened. On the notebook, there is a hint system that lets you know how many words are incorrect, so if you get stuck, you can guess your way through.
Speaking of stuck, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami also has a hint system, although it doesn’t give you too much of a hint at all. A lot of the puzzles and mystery within the game is actually quite tricky, requiring you to really think about what actions you want to take next and where to go. I found myself getting stuck quite a few times and needing to really reset before I could find what I was missing.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a visually charming game and the voice acting takes it to the next level. The characters all have really fantastic voices that give them more personality. Their different personalities change how you should interact with them or if you should take what they say seriously. They are each well written and give a lot to the world as well as the story.
This game is extremely silly, funny, and interesting to play through, but it’s one that will give you a challenge. I enjoyed my time with Duck Detective: The Secret Salami and found myself captivated by the world around me while playing.
You can find Duck Detective: The Secret Salami on Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox.
