Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping Review: A Mystery Worth Quacking

Eugene McQuacklin, the questionably famous Duck Detective, has fallen on hard times.  Broke as he’s ever been, kicked out of his apartment, spiraling deeper and deeper into a debilitating bread addiction (aren’t we all), things are looking pretty beak-er-bleak.  So, of course, when his lovably irritating sidekick, Freddy Frederson, who is also his landlord, invites him on a glamping trip, Eugene… forces himself to go so he doesn’t have to talk about how behind on rent he is.

As it turns out, though, this campground (or glampground?  Whatever) is… haunted?  And some sort of celebrity is staying on the premises?  And there’s a kid’s plushie with a poorly hidden camera sticking out of its face?  Sounds like a great reason for the Duck Detective to do all sorts of uninvited snooping and quack the case.

For those not in the know, Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is the second in a now-series of casual deduc(k)tion games that take the explorative, fill-in-the-blank format of The Case of the Golden Idol or Tangle Tower and shaves off all the darker, murdery bits.  The result is a cute, funny, and very charming 2-3 hour mystery with just enough challenge to keep you engaged without ruffling too many feathers.

Look, I’m not that difficult to please.  Give me a cute cartoon duck, give him a magnifying glass and match him with a voice actor whose hard-boiled noir-tinted performance plays it just straight enough to be hilarious, and there’s no way a bad game is coming out of it.  Thankfully, Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping takes everything that was good about its freshman outing and… well, pretty much just does more of it.

With the exception of now having Freddy following you around so closely that he’s either a very enthusiastic sidekick or a very talkative tumor, virtually every single mechanic from the original Duck Detective remains intact here and relatively untouched, making it an experience almost solely meant for those who have already played the first game and enjoyed it enough to play more.  Hey, that’s me!

But for the uninitiated, let’s take a brief tour of the basics.  Each of the numerous “cases” you’ll solve throughout the Duck Detective games will have you filling out sections of Detective McQuacklin’s journal.  You’ll assign both a first name and last name to each character in the game based on context clues, and then take on a variety of fill-in-the-blank puzzles that you’ll solve with keywords you find within the game world.  This is where a vast majority of Duck Detective’s short runtime will take place – because while some keywords can be found in basic conversations with any given suspect, others will require you to inspect each character or object you find with a magnifying glass to find smaller clues that contribute to the wider puzzle.  You’ll also ask suspects to comment on each other or specific clues you find, leading you further down the rabbit hole of hard-hitting enigmas such as “Who is Freddy’s mysterious new girlfriend?”

Okay – to be fair, not every mystery is only there to be cute and trivial.  The further you go into The Ghost of Glamping, the more its broader story comes into focus and you’ll have to actually scrutinize the clues you’re given to make the connections you need to.  And while I wasn’t being facetious when I said that The Ghost of Glamping is mechanically identical to the original game, there are some minor improvements here that I appreciated.  For one, most of the deduc(k)tions you make in The Ghost of Glamping generally make sense, despite a couple of late-game cases that required a logical hop, skip, and jump.  That’s still a material improvement from the original title, though.  Because while I very much enjoyed my time with the original Duck Detective, some of its mysteries felt less like carefully constructed capers and more like totally aimless guesswork where I’d stitch together clues that the game seemingly pulled out of its butt.  The Ghost of Glamping isn’t immune to this issue, since by the end of the game I was eagerly waiting for Duck Detective’s full recap of events since I wasn’t completely sure myself, but for the most part, it was nice to feel like I was generally along for the ride.

Another improvement is that the humor in The Ghost of Glamping felt more consistent to me.  From beginning to end, the game is full of goofy gags and charming little quirks that kept me smiling even in times that I was left scratching my head on how to connect one clue to another.  By contrast, the original game’s humor eventually gave way to a surprisingly self-serious mystery that seemingly forgot its roots of being a game about a duck in a trench coat, so I appreciate that the sequel is a little bit better at reading the room.

Just like the original game, prospective detectives can choose between the sleuth mode, which is the standard difficulty, or the story mode, which maintains the same overall puzzle difficulty but gives more clear indicators when you’ve done something incorrect.  While my review of the original title left me torn on which of these to recommend due to the aforementioned obtuseness of its late-game cases, no such caveat exists here, and I’d recommend anybody interested in the actual gameplay to start on sleuth mode and only change to story difficulty if you find yourself struggling.

The Ghost of Glamping’s presentation is also nearly identical to the original game, and that’s in no way a bad thing.  Each character is presented as a paper cutout that shimmies and wobbles its way through an isometric game world, with each environment being full of cute little touches and interactable objects to knock over just for the sake of it.  The music isn’t something I’ll be adding to my Spotify playlist anytime soon, but it does a great job of delivering some film noir vibes with the tongue-in-cheek feel of a Nickelodeon cartoon.  If anything is the star of the show presentation-wise, it’s the voice acting.  Every character here is voiced with great enthusiasm, but there’s no beating the voice actor playing the Duck Detective himself, Sean Chiplock, who does a fantastic job being the exact right combination of dry and melodramatic to imbue Eugene McQuacklin with tons of personality and charm.  There’s even a dedicated quack button, which is as excellent a design choice as it is an obvious one.  The game also runs fantastically on the Steam Deck, making it a great casual title to play on the go.

Ultimately, any fan of Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is going to feel right at home here.  The Ghost of Glamping refuses to fix what’s not broken about the original, instead opting for a more consistent tone and slightly less obtuse sleuthing that makes detective work feel that much more satisfying.  If you haven’t played the original Duck Detective and are interested in this, the stories are independent enough that you will technically be fine.  But I’d still say you’re better off playing them in order, if only to follow the wisps of overarching story that will clearly be culminating in another sequel before long, if The Ghost of Glamping’s ending is anything to go by.  And hey, you certainly won’t hear me complaining!  Indie devs, give me as many animal detective games as you can, don’t hold back.

GREAT