Kurzes Detektiv Spiel mit lustigen Charakteren, einem witzigen Fall, dessen Lösung doch irgendwie überrascht, fantastischer Vertonung und tollem Artstyle. Außerdem gibt es eine Taste zum Quacken. Das Spiel ist ziemlich simpel gehalten und die Rätsel sind nicht allzu schwer. Man läuft rum erkundet Sachen und redet mit Verdächtigen und schließt, dann aus Stichwörtern das Geschehen. Ganz einfaches, sich wiederholendes Gameplay, aber da man nach 2 h bereits durch sein kann, wird es nicht nervig und langweilig.
Wer Lust auf ein kurzes, witziges Detektiv-Abenteuer hat, kann hier ruhig zugreifen.

A really nice blend of detective noir and funny quips in a golden idol-esque framework.

The puzzle solutions are simple and you have to jump through some logic hoops but overall they were entertaining enough to never feel dull.

My only criticism of the game is how short it is with barely an hour of gameplay it kept me craving more deduc(k)tion to do.

A fun game! The writing is terrific and the actors' performances really bring it to life! I share the sentiment that others are bringing up where some of the deductions are a bit of a stretch, but it's still very fun from start to finish!

I will say, it is worth mentioning that the game really is all about the salami case. There's more depth to it than that, but I was hoping that the game would lead to more cases, to see our brave/recently-divorced hero in more situations. The single case is very well developed, but I would have loved to have more cases of this quality to solve.

Would definitely pick up more Duck Detective games though!!

EDIT: I want to clarify my "not enough cases/locations" critique. The issue is not one of length (a ~1.5 hour playtime is very much appreciated right now!) but of depth in characterization. As it stands, we learn so many things about the protagonist (Divorced! Ex-cop! Breadoholic! Novelist??), but we never really explore any of it. The BearBus setting, characters, case feel to me like a very strong Act 1, but one lacking the rest of its story. I wish I could've delved more into the "why" of this character and maybe even a resolution of some sort of arc for him.

I was gifted my copy of the game for review purposes. I played it on Twitch but was not payed to do so or share my thoughts here. I had a great time playing Duck Detective! What started off as a cute mystery game turned into something much more elaborate as the story progressed. I loved the art style, the voice acting was fantastic, and though I had strong suspicions from the get go the narrative did manage to pull the rug out from under me as I played. I just wish the game was longer, or that there were more mysteries to have solved. The game felt like it could have given me more. I hope Happy Broccoli games makes a few sequels. I'd love to help Duck Detective solve a few more mysteries, with Freddy his guy in the chair maybe??

This game has a great artstyle and wonderful voice acting. The detective gameplay interviewing witnesses, investigating evidence, and piecing it all together is a lot of fun. Most of the solutions were fun to figure out, but it is possible to brute force your way to a solution without understanding how you would've gotten there. At the very least, when I did brute force one or two solutions, I understood the logic of the solution after the fact. My only real complaint is that, when you investigate evidence, it seems like you're not allowed to exit the screen until you obtain all clues, which is odd.

It was just ok. It has that over the top noir narration (duck detective is struggling with a bread addiction, which is pretty funny) and the way that plays with the cartoon-y graphics is effective, but a lot of the setting is aggressively uninspired, most of the mysteries are convoluted nonsense and the puzzles are quickly reduced to a matter of elimination. I feel like it re-treads a lot of ground that was already explored in more artistically ambitious games like Frog Detective, Tangle Tower, and I’m sure the many other animal-themed detective games that keep popping up for some reason. On the other hand, it’s pretty polished, fully voiced, cheap and less than 3 hours long, so if you love the genre you could do worse than this.

This is a very short game focused on solving one case. The writing and voice acting are funny and charming. It's a bit weak as a detective puzzle game though. The game doesn't do a good job at communicating what it wants from you. The game will create sentences that need the blanks to be filled in to solve the mystery. Collecting clues will give access to words to fill in the blanks. The mysteries the game will give you to solve will have a vague title. This became an issue as I would struggle to figure out what mystery the game wanted me to solve. There was also a moment in the game where it gave me a clue with the initials "OO". I first read it as two zeroes which led me to wasting time thinking for sure I had the right answer but wondering why it wasn't working. The game in general needs to do a better job of communicating what it wants the player to do. The story ends up being dramatically unsatisfying. I didn't seen the culprits coming but in a bad way. I was just baffled about why one of them was involved at all. The game doesn't dig too much into any of these characters to feel a way about them committing crimes either. Overall, as a detective game, it's fine. I've played way better than this. Since this was one short case, I wonder if the developers plan on making this a franchise of small releases. Eugene McQuacklin is a fun character, and there's plenty of room for improvement in a sequel.

I previously stated that Duck Detective's VA needed to be everything. Today I learned that they're voiced by Sean Chiplock so it's safe to say they already are.

Good game! Looks good, has charming writing, some fun and interesting puzzles, and some great voice acting. For what it is, there isn't much actually wrong with it. I did kinda hope there was a bit more to this game, though, as it is INCREDIBLY short. And I'm fine with short games, but I was actually quite disappointed that it ended THIS quick. The only thing I can hope for here is that we get a lengthier sequel because I wanted to spend way more time with this Duck than I actually got, but considering everything I've been playing as of late, a super short, small, and purely comedic game is kinda what I needed.

Thank you, duck detective. Truly the greatest creature on earth.

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a short but charming peak into a single case of the titular Duck Detective, Eugene McQuacklin. A hardboiled down-on-his-luck duck trying his best to make rent. The case that falls into his lap is to uncover who exactly The Salami Bandit is and why they are causing such havoc to this out of the way bus station.

I loved this game. It's so charming and over the top. Constant jazz and a rainy moody atmosphere. Eugene has walked straight out of film noir and is stealing the show of every dialogue he's in. Sean Chiplock gives a fantastic performance and frankly everyone else in the supporting cast does as well. They completely sell the animal office workers they are portraying. And that's good because the bulk of the game is learning about this cast and all of their interpersonal drama and conflict. I think everyone will find a favorite in the bunch. I'd love to tell you mine but that'd be giving away part of the gameplay!

Deductions! One of the first things you have to do is find out the name of everyone in the office. Using deductions and details in your environment you'll pickup clues and useful information that helps you piece together the case.
This game is overflowing with details too. The office feels very lived in. My favorite detail is when you go into investigation mode and hover your magnifying glass over a suspect the part you're investigating gets a lot more detailed. Almost as if you're focusing and seeing them for who they actually are in that moment. It's so creative and adds a lot of character to Eugene. It's like the cartoony artstyle is how he views things at first glance, barely giving them the time of day, before he focuses in and gets serious.

The Duck Detective is a two to three hour game so I don't want to give too much away. If you're into sleuthing and mysteries it's easily worth the asking price for the quality of what you're getting. This case is worth seeing through to the end.

Eugene is a character I'd love to see more of so my biggest hope is we get more cases from the Duck Detective!

A more light-hearted and family-friendly take on the Case of the Golden Idol formula, though not nearly as good. In terms of presentation, the game can't be faulted. Its aesthetic is clearly inspired by Paper Mario, but it uses it well. There's some funny jokes, some charming characterisation, and despite the incredibly short running time, Duck Detective can't help but make an impression.

Where it all comes undone a bit is in the balance (or rather imbalance) of its puzzle solving. The game features deduction sequences ripped straight from Golden Idol, where the player is required to choose the correct nouns and verbs in order to piece together what has happened. The problem is, most of the time you can easily solve these through trial and error, without truly understanding what events have transpired. The game tells you when two or less choices are incorrect, and it also tells you when exactly three are incorrect. Using this knowledge, you can eventually luck into completing a sequence. Hardly befitting of a great detective! There's also one puzzle involving a safe code that, in my opinion, was just too dang cryptic for its own good. Even the hint system couldn't help me out with that one.

A pleasant enough diversion for an evening, but I wouldn't flock to the Steam page to buy it at full price if I were you.

For most people, the appeal of this game probably lies in the twee mystery-ish vibes it shares with contemporaries Frog Detective and Later Alligator. What interested me was that it paired these with the actual mechanics of a mystery game, as well. Duck Detective sells itself on its store page as "Aggretsuko meets Return of the Obra Dinn", and in doing so it gives itself pretty big shoes to fill. Unfortunately, those shoes fit about as well as you'd expect shoes to fit on a duck.

It's a little weird that Duck Detective cites Obra Dinn when mechanically it's much closer to Case of the Golden Idol: as the player investigates, they collect words in a word bank, which they then use to fill in the blanks of prewritten statements to form a deduction (it even makes you deduce the names of each character, even though that makes much less sense in a game where your character could just ask them). There's nothing wrong with this mechanic, inherently - Golden Idol's a fine game - but crafting these deductions is a delicate balancing act, and it's one Duck Detective seems to stumble on more often than not. The sentences are short and vague enough that it's sometimes possible to put in answers which are accurate but simply not what that specific question is looking for, which is confusing and frustrating. The culprit's alias, "The Salami Bandit", is in your list of proper nouns, making it difficult to tell in some deductions whether you're actually supposed to figure out who did something or just punt it to a later deduction. Many of the words in your word bank come from investigating or asking about something completely irrelevant to the deduction that uses it - this isn't a mortal sin, mechanically (Golden Idol does it too, sparingly), but there's a dissonance to it that just feels kinda lame.

As far as the twee-vibe part goes, though, Duck Detective works out alright. The characters are all just abrasive enough to be plausible suspects without being actually unlikeable, and weird enough to be memorable without being so weird that it gets in the way of actually deducing stuff about them. The cartoonish style of the dialogue is fine by itself, but really doesn't lend itself well to being voice-acted, and I ended up muting the voices before even meeting a second character. No shade on the actors themselves, though - I don't think anyone could have made it work for me.

To cap this off on a high note: I want to make a mystery game myself, and I think a lot about how to do that (which is why I've been so critical towards something I would probably just passively enjoy otherwise). I think the most interesting idea I've had so far was the concept of structuring difficulty levels around the amount of feedback the game gives you, so it was really cool and encouraging to see this game do the same thing.

+ Great VA and snappy writing
+ Great illustration style
+ 'Golden Idol-style' deduction gameplay is adopted well.

- Disappointingly short. (I know it's a small team and priced pretty fairly but I was really expecting at least a few cases.)
- Clue presentation/structure isn't clear. Who you should question with what clue didn't always make sense and leads you to just spam every item on every character.

There's room to expand and improve. Hoping to see more from the developers in an expanded sequel, perhaps.