When your salami is stolen, who do you call? The Duck Detective! Addicted to bread, newly divorced, and unable to pay rent, the Duck Detective must take on less esteemed jobs to get back on his webbed feet. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, released on May 23 by Happy Broccoli Games, turns the down-on-his-luck, hard-boiled detective trope on its head — then makes it quack.
Duck Detective begins like any good noir detective film; actually, it essentially is a playable detective film. The game can be completed in just three hours, making it one of those games you’re likely to play through it in one sitting. You play as the Duck Detective, whose first mystery is to find out what happened last night. Once that’s settled, he can get to his client. The only problem there is that he doesn’t know who called in the lunch room mystery: Who stole the salami?
Once he’s on site at the office, the Duck Detective must interview suspects, spot hidden clues, and pull together the details. He’ll track what he’s found in an in-game notebook that contains keywords related to the interviews and clues; to solve the mystery, you’ve got to fill in the blanks with those keywords, à la Case of the Golden Idol. (This gameplay starts from the first scene, when you’re figuring out what happened last night, which serves as a simplified tutorial.)
What the Duck Detective finds in the office is a dramatic, silly, and quite complicated mystery to slowly untangle. Yes, there’s the missing salami, but there’s so much more: hurt feelings, jealous co-workers, a canceled Halloween party, and an international conspiracy. For the most part, the office workers are pretty apathetic to the Duck Detective’s presence, plainly answering his questions and getting on with their rote corporate work — until they no longer can hide from his (actually quite capable) deduction skills.
You’ll continue this fill-in-the-blanks gameplay for the entire game, the scenarios getting more complex with each thrust of the story. There are a lot of words to pick up, some of which are clear misdirection. It’s tempting, when stumped, to just take random words and slot them in, but that gets frustrating. When you don’t know the solve, it feels more rewarding to go back to the environment and dig deeper into the office. I can see where the game’s backtracking could feel grating to some, but it’s not how I experienced the game: It’s so charming and short that nothing overstayed its welcome.
Throughout it all, Duck Detective is a silly little mystery game that leans into the absurdity of it all. There’s a button to make him quack. Lots of fake duck facts, like the fact that ducks sleep with one eye open to keep watch for crime, or that they can fly backwards. I found myself giggling through an afternoon of quacking and clue-finding, the most I’ve laughed playing a game in some time. The thing is, I both wish there was more to play while also loving that it’s a short, fully-contained experience. Duck Detective could easily turn into an episodic franchise, like a detective TV show, with the duck solving a whole bunch of crimes. Of course, Happy Broccoli Games hasn’t given any indication that’s the case, but here’s hoping.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami was released May 23 on Nintendo Switch, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on a Steam Deck using a download code provided by Happy Broccoli Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
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