Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping Review

indie, mystery, puzzle

You are a recently divorced Ducktective living with your assistant Freddy the investiGATOR and desperately needs a vacation. Why not go glamping?

Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is the second installment to Happy Broccoli Game's no-murder mystery game by that asks you to solve everything: from why your wife divorced you, who stole your lawn chair, who all the NPCs are, all the way to the mystery of the Sunny Lake Campsite!

âœ… cute art-style
âœ… fully VA
âœ… dedicated quack button
âœ… decent SFX & BGM

Duck Detective has a simple and colourful 3D animated setting with flat "paper-like" characters. The characters are crisp and well drawn, have simple idle animations, and all come with distinct characteristics.Â

Backed with a typical mystery, jazzy background music, and simple sound effects, the game also has a well executed, fully voice acted cast of characters. Best of all, our resident Duck Detective has his own dedicated quack button so you can fulfill the 200 quacks per day that the loading screen tooltip tells you about.

Story and Gameplay

âœ… very approachable mystery
âœ… DeDUCKtion system is fun and simple
âœ… built-in hints system
âœ… 2-3hr game time

I will never be not amused by deDUCKtions

Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping has a very Scooby-esque vibe, with a mystery that doesn't take itself seriously. You are a recently divorced detective (who apparently has a dangerous bread addiction) and your assistant, in attempt to get you out of your funk, invites you to glamp as a third wheel along with his mysterious girlfriend to the Sunny Lakeside with a Sanatorium as it's main attraction. The cast of characters are quirky with their unique, yet simple, situations.

DeDUCKtion prowess like Sherduck Holmes, quack!

The gameplay in Duck Detective is easy to learn, fun and intuitive. At first glance, wandering around the game, talking to NPCs, and inspecting them, everything is blank, vague, and flat, as you would when you first encounter people in real life. However, with the use of your magnifying glass you can inspect items and speak to NPCs with a discerning eye to create deductions about things as if you are Sherlock Holmes. Nothing is just given to you, no one really tells you their names, so you have to deduce everything yourself.Â

You have a handy journal to refer to the things you've investigated

As for solving the several cases, you gain key words as clues while you speak to the NPCs, walk around and, inspect items. These keywords are pre-assigned into categories, such as nouns, adjectives, etc, and you then place these keywords in your journal in order to solve the case at hand using a simple fill in the blanks.

You probably won't need it, but Hints are available if you get stuck

But don't worry, the game is approachable, so much so that my 6 year old is now playing it after seeing me play it. The game will quickly tell you if you've guessed wrong and there aren't any consequences for doing so. The game will even give you hints per task to help you piece the puzzle.

Final Thoughts

Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is a mystery game that executes everything they want to do to near perfection. It's a fun, simple, and short palate cleanser game. Only downfall, if any, is that it's executed so well, that I wish there were more. This is the second game to the Duck Detective series, and I am very much looking forward to the next one!