I just love a good mystery. Being a lifelong fan of the detective genre in just about any entertainment medium, it’s a sure bet I would give a Duck Detective game a go eventually. Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is the second of the bird investigator’s games, but the first one I’ve ever tried, which I’m glad that I did.
Fun, witty, and very quick to get through, there’s very little that I could say against it in all honestly. In it, you play as Eugene McQuacklin, the titular Duck Detective, who along with his obnoxious assistant Freddy is taking a much needed but totally unwanted vacation on a haunted campsite that Freddy coaxed him into going.
So cartoony that it hurts, Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is very easy to play, so much so that it’s now coming out on Android. On PC, which is where I played the game, there’s not much to control our avian buddy as he hobbles about talking to witnesses, gathers information, and makes deduckctions based on them, with basically all interactions being one-button menu-driven. Except for quacking. There’s a dedicated button for that as there should be.
The base gameplay is simple enough: as people talk to you, you get keywords with which you literally fill in the blanks in order to draw conclusions during the investigation. That is perhaps the only real fault that I’ve found with the game, as some of the words feel a little randomly thrown in and used too conveniently in order to move the story along.
Then again, this isn’t really meant to be a long affair and it’s all the better for it. Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping doesn’t overstay its welcome, clocking in neatly at two hours, making it feel kinda like an interactive animated feature of sorts. By the time I was done, I was quite satisfied with what it offered, having swiftly gone through the small cast’s character progression.
Speaking of characters, this is easily one of the best balanced games in terms of writing and acting I’ve played in a while. The story is funny and surprisingly complex – well, as complex as it can get in two hours, anyway – and while there’s not a lot of dialogue to be had, what’s on offer is sharp, hilarious, but most importantly, VERY well acted by the voice performers. Eugene’s in particular is especially good as he delivers one exasperated line after the other in incredibly humorous fashion.
Developer Happy Broccoli Games certainly has something special going on with Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping. It’s smart and full of personality, easy to play, and it offers plenty of options that make it playable for even the youngest of armchair PIs. Also knowing that there’s a continuity between these games is even more enough to play more of them, which I most certainly will from now on.
