I have a sweet spot in my heart for animals talking and doing crazy things (for an animal). Like, yeah, it's just a cat, but this cat can speak with an Aussie accent and play mini golf, this cat is awesome! So, when I was looking through the demos on the last Steam Next Fest and they gave me a noir duck with a deep voice solving crimes, I knew that I could only expect a great ride. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami can be a short adventure, but my God, how charismatic this game is!

When we talk about gameplay, there isn't a lot to see here, honestly. The title is a short and streamlined adventure game, where you control the titular Duck Detective trying to solve a bizarre case about salamis in an office. Your main goal is to complete your "Deducktions", puzzles in form of phrases that can be completed with information you collect talking to people or investigating clues. Solving them advance the story until you finally can bring everyone to your big reveal at the end.

Those enigmas were OK. I don't think they were amazing to solve, nor so easy as to be obvious. A lot of them really requires you to connect small bits of information, and that's cool, but some of the conclusions were too far for me (and even reminded me of classic point-and-clicks and their impossible puzzle solutions). The "hint system" was too enigmatic and didn't get me a lot of help, so, if you get stuck in any of the Deducktions, it's fine.

That said, I don't think you should play Duck Detective: The Secret Salami purely because of the puzzles. If this game was just a short film or an audiobook, I would still have loved it, because of how charismatic and fun all the characters are in this small story. Starting from the Duck Detective itself, from the hilarious takes on how he is addicted to ​​bread (instead of cigarettes), until how he gets carried away and becomes more excited about the case as new clues appear. I just loved the character and I need more adventures with him!

The rest of the cast is also amazing and too damn funny — as I said, how not to love quirky animals with quirky personalities? The strange geek alligator, the old penguin that hates teens, the cute sheep that probably listened too much true crime podcasts... My favorite is the workaholic cat trying to balance stress and the clients she needs to talk to (too relatable). The scripts and jokes are great, but the work done by the voice actors was responsible for, at least, 50% of my love for those characters.

After some hours in this office, I just wanted more of that little world and those strange animals. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami isn't exactly a masterpiece in gameplay — although it even does its job of offering interesting challenges —, but it shines with their amazing cast of characters and the story by itself. I don't know what the team at Happy Broccoli Games is planning next, but I think that our Duck Detective needs more money and I would love to join him on some more cases.