Image via Happy Broccoli
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Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping brings us back to the world introduced in Duck Detective: The Secret Salami and, well, it’s exactly what you’d expect the adventure game to be. This is a short, bite-sized adventure with colorful characters, and it ends it feeling rather cozy due to it being a rather laid back approach to sometimes low stakes mysteries. It’s a good thing! Not every title needs to be a 40-hour epic, and Happy Broccoli Games again created a captivating story to savor over the course of an afternoon.
Eugene McQuacklin, who I’ll just go ahead and call Duck Detective from here on out since everyone else does, is down on his luck as the sequel begins. He’s living in Freddy Frederson’s spare room, still is addicted to bread, and his ex-wife wants nothing to do with him and won’t return his calls. He can’t wallow, however, as Freddy is dragging him on a glamping trip with his new girlfriend to grounds near a potentially haunted asylum. (He already paid for it!) Forced along, the detective finds either ghosts or haunting the area, or there’s a decidedly more dastardly explanation for unsettling behavior. It’s up to us to investigate again.
Aside from Freddy, the alligator that got Duck Detective goat’s in the first game, tagging along, Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping proceeds pretty much identically to the first game. A mystery will arise. You’ll need to put together deducktions, based on observations, interviewing people, and interacting with the environment, to get topics to feed into a Mad-Libs style statement figuring out what happened. Solving one mystery opens up the next, advancing the story and granting access to new areas.
What I loved about Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping that is unique to this entry is honestly the increased interactions with Freddy. The Duck Detective is a prickly sort of character that feels plucked from a noir novella and dumped into what is, at a glance, an adorable world that includes a lot of quirky characters. By adding Freddy as a more present foil, we get to appreciate the ways in which this more goofy, nerdy, and typical person interacts with this serious investigator.
However, I also appreciate that despite being cozy, The Ghost of Glamping continues the tradition of Duck Detective actually including some dark and mature themes just like The Secret Salami. While it’s played for laughs and silliness since it is just bread, the titular detective does have an addiction. His relationship with his former lover is an issue. There are not-great people here trying to take advantage of and hurt others.
Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping offers more of the same and, in the case of this series, that’s exactly what Happy Broccoli Games should be doing. It’s a welcome addition to our gaming libraries! The characters are still incredibly entertaining. The gameplay is sound. The narrative is engaging. It feels like another episode of something we all already agreed that we enjoyed, and I appreciate the relief of knowing there’s a consistent series that will regularly deliver a certain type of enjoyable adventure for an evening.
Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is available for the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
Published: May 29, 2025 09:00 am