Duck Detective: The Secret Salami

Duck Detective has some of the best mechanics of any puzzle game I have played. You gather clues from collecting objects and words. The words you get from talking to people and inspecting objects. You then use the words to fill in the blanks of your deducktions to figure out what has happened in order to further the plot. It's all very simple and easy to get used to and is helped by the game's fantastic UI. You can get an idea of what to try next by looking at the map where it lists where each person is and if they have an exclamation mark then you should talk to them or show them an object to get their thoughts on it. The game also has a hint system but to be honest I didn't find it very useful as it is extremely vague. You can also simply try various combos of words in the deducktions and guess them if you can't figure it out based on clues. I had to do this a few times. The game will say how many errors you have and obviously if you try something different and that number goes down then you have found the correct option for that blank. The reason I had to do this is that while the plot makes sense in hindsight I had trouble piecing together where it was going by the clues provided and didn't always see it's logic. That being said many of the puzzles are well done, make sense, and have good hints provided by objects and other clues. The voice acting was great as was the humour. I can see kids enjoying this but as an adult I had a great time as well. The art style was very well done. It almost had the look of a pop up diorama the way the characters moved. One thing I didn't like was the fact that at the end I can't choose to arrest no one. I played Duck Detective on Linux. It never crashed and I didn't notice any bugs or spelling errors. There is no graphics options aside from resolution. The game saves on exit and there is just one save slot. Even though the game had no v-sync option it still respected my refresh rate.

Have you ever thought to yourself as you were playing Obra Dinn: "You know, this might be one of the greatest detective games ever made, but wouldn't it be improved if you were playing as a hard-boiled detective, that was also a duck?" Probably you haven't but someone did - and then they made this wonderful little game. Duck Detective follows in the footsteps of games like Obra Dinn and the Case of the Golden Idol in that it consists of a series of fill-in-the-blanks challenges that you solve by carefully observing the environment for clues. It parts ways from those classics in playing a bit more like a point-and-click adventure (you the move the titular duck around the screen, interacting with objects, etc.) and in having a much more light-hearted tone. The characters are cute cartoon animals, the tone is light, slightly absurd and often genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. A lot of love clearly went into this game, which is inventive, gorgeously drawn and written, and full of charm. The voice actors in particular are superb, hamming it up in the best possible way to sell the kooky characters. The game might look like it is intended for kids but the puzzles pull no punches and will require skillful "de-duck-tion" (as the titular character of course calls is) on your part. The only complaint I have is that it is much, much too short! I finished it in about two hours ... but they were two of the best hours I've spent with a game recently. Do yourself a favor and pick this up.

Sweet, charming and simple. the art is very fun and the story had a few twists. The puzzles arn't too hard and the detective aspect is done pretty well, were it isn't too repeative.

A charming and short game, with strong voice acting. There was one puzzle that I needed to look up the solution to online. Everything else was pretty breezy. Overall a fun deducktion game.

Everything promised (and more) is delivered. Duck? Yes. Detective? Yes. Salami? Yes. On top of that many more funny characters, mysteries and 100% real duck facts.