Duck Detective: The Secret Salami
What a hidden gem this was. I discovered this in a demo festival and bought it immediately when it was ready. It's a short, polished detective game which was even better than I expected. You play a down-on-his-luck duck - a private detective for hire, and you get called to a case to discover who stole someone's lunch. It turns into something bigger than that in a really clever way, and I really enjoyed the story. You investigate clues, interrogate people, then make deducktions to progress the case. It's a little short for it's price - and honestly until partway through I just assumed the game would have several cases but it's just the one.
Pros
- Fully voice acted
- Things you can interact with are highlighted so you don't have to randomly click on stuff
- Logical puzzles that you can actually work out from clues and dialogue, rather than randomly guessing. I had to think a bit, but never got completely stuck
- Much more interesting than I originally thought it would be
- Simple controls
- The game takes place all in one office, spread across about 6 rooms - so it's easy to get from place to place when investigating
Cons
- The game indicates if you're missing anything at a location, which is great - unfortunately the indicator shows even if you're missing something that only shows up later in the game. So for example, Manfred's office has the indicator for pretty much the whole game, but there's something in there that you can only interact with towards the end of the game.
- About 2.5 hours long. It's a high quality indie game, but €10 for 2.5 hours is a lot.