There are crimes that shock, crimes that abhor. The vast city a series of dark alleyways leading to seedy dives. Cunning and deadly conmen look for an easy rube. Conspiracy after conspiracy, webs of lies upon lies.
There’s a brightly lit bus station break room with stolen lunch.
In Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, the gritty realism of noir is forsaken for the brighter climate of corporate monotony – perhaps a more soul-crushing world of rigged numbers games than any that Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler ever wrote of.
You play as Eugene McQuacklin, a tragic, down-on-his-luck PI with a shabby office and a questionable addiction to bread. Voiced by Sean Chiplock in a great Chris Parnell-like baritone, McQuacklin feels like a perfect send-up of the genre’s bold, broken leading men – one who stands in perfect comedic juxtaposition of the bright, colorful funny-animal world in which he toils.
Called to the BearBus station by an unknown client, McQuacklin finds himself questioning a group of (literally) colorful characters, from a bored giraffe receptionist to a dopey water buffalo bus driver – none of whom seem to know what he’s doing there. Designed like paper-doll cutouts, their animations are bouncy, jostled around and two-dimensional (not unlike Paper Mario characters), and their designs are instantly endearing. It’s a pleasant web of lies to reside in.
I won’t delve too deeply into their characteristics, as part of the game’s mystery lies in discovering their names, positions at the company, and general personalities. Gameplay is a surprisingly satisfying ‘deducktion’ mechanic: as McQuacklin interacts with characters, you pick up specific important words which you must then slot into a series of MadLibs-style deductions.
The compelling aspect of this is that none of these deductions are straightforward – despite the cutesy and cartoony aesthetic, Duck Detective requires some actual mental gymnastics to determine the relationships between the suspects, their actions, and the larger mystery. These aren’t brain-breaking puzzles, by any means – the whole of The Secret Salami can be completed in less than two hours – but each mystery (who stole the lunch; who’s laundering money) allows for enough conceptual wiggle room that the game feels more engaging than weightless.
No matter how cute the world might be, Duck Detective might have stumbled under lesser writing. Luckily, the humor is just snappy enough without feeling pandering – from the loading screen ‘facts’ (Did you know? There are over 1000 ducks!) to the clumsy interior text of a cheesy sci-fi novel found in your investigations, the game is filled with a warm sense of chuckling goodwill.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami feels uniquely and finely crafted; each piece of the whole works together to carry the experience rather than a singular aspect (the cartoonish appeal, the clue-gathering, or the dialogue) struggling to carry the game. Perhaps this is due to the game’s brevity – the player spends just enough time in this world to appreciate its idiosyncrasies without those idiosyncrasies losing their charm. In fact, the game’s brief nature leads the player to believe – or at least to hope – that this is only the first case in a series of Duck Detective capers. We’d be delighted for another quick trip to this world and its mock-seedy mysteries.
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