I won’t lie, I love Eugene McQuacklin, I’m maybe his number-one fan. Happy Broccoli Games’ Duck Detective: The Secret Salami last year left me wanting so much more. It even climbed to the second spot on my list of games of the year. When a sequel was announced last December, I was so happy, my addiction to the bread being such a hard thing to kick. Now, a year on since The Secret Salami, The Ghost of Glamping puts our star detective in a spooky, green-tinted campsite by a sanatorium with a couple of familiar faces.

Still divorced from his Swan companion, Eugene was kicked out of his last place and still fawns over Ana at every chance a noir-style detective can. Now living with his annoying but adoring fan, Freddy Frederson, Eugene is cajoled into going on this trip he doesn’t want to until he finds out that the haunted campsite has a theft problem. Now the workaholic bread addict has something to do on the trip while being followed by Freddy at every turn. Every new revelation spawns another set of basic family-friendly word-based puzzles for Eugene, and ostensibly, you.

As a second go at a Duck Detective story, The Ghost of Glamping is just as cliché-laden and camp with it as ever before, all with Sean Chiplock continuing to voice/narrate every deduc(k)tion and semi-depressed noir duck thought. Alongside him and Eugene is a colorful cast that somewhat rivals The Secret Salami’s troupe of troubled tormentors. They are just as diametrically opposed but connected to each other as the office workers were a year before. Now there is a “spooky” set of happenings taking place at an old abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium. Yeah, they treated everything like it was mental health back then, aside from actual mental health.

Retaining the same charming art style and noir word puzzle detective gameplay, Happy Broccoli Games’ Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping has all the charm, heart, and intrigue as the previous entry. Similar puzzles of being given an objective to figure out, such as who is staying in which tent, and you just have to figure out what names are in your book and make sure you’ve found the right ones. I compared The Secret Salami to Lucas Pope’s Return of the Obra Dinn before, and there is a reason for that: you are simply filling in the blanks.

Unlike Return of the Obra Dinn, however, Duck Detective is (maybe) not aimed at children. There are plenty of illusions to bread addiction, but certainly that DreamWorks “For the kids, with a joke or two for the parents” charm. The Ghost of Glamping is no different. In fact, it is exactly what I wanted since finishing The Secret Salami. It is more of what we had before, just in a different setting with different characters, but the same hunger to investigate the smallest of things.

I obviously don’t want to spoil much of the plot for The Ghost of Glamping, as (much like its predecessor) you can complete it in a sitting or two. Taking only a couple of hours, the story of The Ghost of Glamping sees you investigating the visitors of the Sunny Lake campsite by the old haunted sanatorium. The sanatorium was home to former diplomat, Patient Twelve, who happened to, let’s say disappear after some unfortunate incidents. That’s about as vague as I can be without spoiling it. Now the campsite hosts guests looking for a tour of the area and to hear ghost stories, as you might have guessed by the title.

Quickly, the plot gets going and Eugene is sent spiraling while being distracted (duckstracted?) by his desire to figure out everyone else’s problems. Who stole what? Why are you connected to him/her? When did X or Y happen? Simple stuff that fills out a simple missing word puzzle, such as: “[blank] did [blank] with [blank] to [blank] [blank].” Duck Detective isn’t particularly difficult, the trouble is working out some of the logic sometimes.

As I’ve said, I have a lot of love for the Duck Detective series, main character Eugene McQuacklin, and even developer Happy Broccoli Games. However, this time out, I would say that there is sort of a “rush” to get the plot together. Admittedly, that could have used another set of eyes to catch an oddity or two. My best example, without spoiling too much, is the kid in the story, Tobi. Tobi is a kid at the Sunny Lake camp with his mother, and he’s obsessed with a trading card game/Pokémon stand-in, Magikorn. At some point, Eugene had mentioned Tobi’s Magikorn plushi, which I hadn’t found yet.

The wider plot and investigation aren’t too hampered by small details like this, but you might stumble on something and think, “What?” Unlike my time last year, however, I didn’t get up and walk away for a couple of hours. As I’ve said, the puzzles aren’t too difficult or confusing, they just need to be a little clearer sometimes. That is probably my biggest issue with Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping. It’s not a massive problem, but certainly something worth mentioning.

Do I think The Ghost of Glamping lives up to my want for more? Yes. Do I still want more? Of course, I do. The simple storytelling and fun, charming aesthetic of a noir duck detective is endlessly joyous. Of a sort, The Ghost of Glamping serves more to fill out the world of the Duck Detective than it does to tell another simple and almost unimportant conspiracy. The ending I got resulted in multiple arrests, including one that could make the next game (hopefully) rather interesting.

Ultimately, Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is another great waddling romp through a charming, funny, and interesting world of conspiracy and missing word puzzles. Still only a couple of hours long, you’ll probably get to the end and still want more from Eugene McQuacklin. Fun and interesting, though a bit less colorful with a green tint or desaturation, there is plenty to enjoy from Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping. Including Sean Chiplock and the rest of the casts’ perfectly camp tone.

A PC review copy of Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping was provided by Happy Broccoli Games for this review.

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Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• More of Duck Detective is all I wanted.
• Still the same fun, sometimes funny puzzles.
• I still want more!

Cons

• The writing could have used a touch of editing.

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