When your salami gets stolen, who do you call? Detective Duck! Addicted to bread, recently divorced, and unable to pay rent, Detective Duck must take on menial jobs to get back on his webbed feet. Detective Duck: Secret SalamiReleased on May 23 by Happy Broccoli Games, it turns the hard-luck, down-on-its-luck detective trope on its head — and then makes the game monotonous.
Detective Duck starts out like any good noir crime film; it’s basically Is playable detective movie. The game can be completed in just three hours, making it one of those games you’ll likely finish in one sitting. You play as Detective Kaczor, whose first mystery is to discover what happened last night. Once that’s solved, he can get to his client. The only problem is that he doesn’t know who called the mystery in the cafeteria: Who stole the salami?
Once inside the office, Detective Kaczor must interrogate suspects, find hidden clues, and gather details. He will keep track of what he finds in an in-game notebook that contains keywords related to interviews and clues; to solve the mystery, you must fill in the gaps with those keywords, à la The Case of the Golden Idol(This gameplay starts with the first scene where you try to figure out what happened the night before. This scene acts as a simplified tutorial.)
Image: Happy Broccoli Games
What Detective Duck finds in the office is a dramatic, silly, and fairly complicated mystery that must be slowly unraveled. Yes, there’s a shortage of salami, but there’s a lot more: hurt feelings, jealous coworkers, a canceled Halloween party, and an international conspiracy. For the most part, the office workers are fairly indifferent to Detective Duck’s presence, simply answering his questions and continuing their routine corporate work—until they can no longer hide from his (actually quite capable) deductive skills.
You will continue this fill-in-the-blanks gameplay throughout the game, with the scenarios becoming more elaborate with each step in the story. There are Very words to pick up, some of which are clearly misleading. When you’re stuck, it’s tempting to just grab random words and insert them, but that gets frustrating. When you don’t know the solution, it can be more satisfying to just go back out into the environment and delve deeper into the office. I understand that backtracking in the game might seem annoying to some, but I didn’t experience the game that way: it’s so sweet and miniature that nothing stays for long.
All this time, Detective Duck It’s a silly little puzzle game that leans towards the absurdity of it all. There’s a button that makes it quack. Lots of false facts about ducks, like the fact that ducks sleep with one eye open to watch out for crime, or that they can fly backwards. I found myself giggling my way through an afternoon of quacking and finding clues, the most laughter I’ve had playing a game in a while. The thing is, I simultaneously wish there was more to play, while also enjoying the fact that it’s a miniature, fully contained experience. Detective Duck could easily turn into an episodic series, like a TV detective show where a duck solves a bunch of crimes. Of course, Happy Broccoli Games hasn’t given any indication that this is the case, but let’s hope so.
Detective Duck: Secret Salami was released on May 23 for Nintendo Switch, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Steam Deck using a download code provided by Happy Broccoli Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find more information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
