Duck Detective: The Secret Salami

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a twisty mystery featuring off-the-wall humor, a memorable cast of characters, and some truly spectacular voice acting. The Duck Detective may crave bread, but I crave more Duck Detective!

This duck-flavoured detective mystery may be short, but it's a great deal of fun. Wonderfully animated and excellently written, figuring out the case of Duck Detective: The Secret Salami might only take a couple of hours, but it's a jolly good way to spend an evening.

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a great addition to the Happy Broccoli Games roster as well as to the detective mystery game genre. While it does play it safe in its approach, the game brings out the lovable aspects of the genre with its authentic characters and unique investigation. The voice acting and music are engaging and tonally-accurate, while the game doesn’t fall victim to stereotype...

Solving crime is no walk in the pond. You are a down-on-his-luck detective who also happens to be a duck. Use your powers of de-duck-tion to inspect evidence, fill in the blanks, and bust the case wide open! This is a short but twisty detective case. Switch version reviewed. Review copy provided by company for testing purposes.

A charming, polished, and warmly humorous detective game whose cute 3D dioramas and delightful graphical touches are a pleasure to interact with.

Duck Detective - The Secret Salami is a charming, albeit somewhat flawed experience that ends far sooner than it begins.

While Duck Detective: The Secret Salami has an incredible voice cast, colorful characters, and an intriguing plot, I was let down by the puzzles and gameplay. There were a few puzzles that I solved on my own with no issue, but many puzzles had clues that left me in the dark instead of guiding me.

Being a detective isn’t easy. Sometimes you have to look at the darkest crimes imaginable. Sometimes you have to observe humanity at its worst. Other times you have to enact vigilante justice upon the seedy underbelly of society. Then there are those rare times when you have to solve the most heinous enigmas of them all, like who stole an office employee‘s lunch? This is just one of the mysteries ...

Charming presentation and interesting investigation mechanics can't make up for the underwhelming story of Duck Detective: The Secret Salami.

But aside from that, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami delivers on its philosophy too well. It’s an easygoing detective game, sure, but its design feels similarly laid-back. It doesn’t feel like it reaches to excel very often. It doesn’t excite, it doesn’t provoke thought, and it doesn’t linger on the tongue. And there’s something to be said about a game like that. Not everything needs to be a rev...

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. T...

Moving through the environments is equally fun. Bump into an office chair and it swivels convincingly. Waddle over a trash can and it tumbles to the ground, spewing its contents on the floor. With the characters presented as 2D cut-outs against adorable, clean-cut 3D backgrounds, the game achieves a delightful diorama-like effect that beautifully matches the playful tone of the game.