I asked for another Duck Detective game and, by Jove, those rascals over at Happy Broccoli Games delivered! I was thoroughly taken with the debut tale of the downy detective, Eugene McQuacklin, and was stoked when I heard that the Berlin-based indies were releasing a sequel back in May 2025. And now, just a few months later, our goosey gumshoe is heading over to mobile, offering iOS and Android players a chance to crack the latest case too. I didn’t get the chance to solve the sequel back in the summer, but I wasn’t going to miss this second opportunity to give the PC version a go, so I grabbed my comedically oversized magnifying glass and got straight to work!
Sadly for Eugene, solving the case of The Secret Salami didn’t do much to turn his fortunes around. The opening of The Ghost of Glamping picks up right where things left off in that regard – we find that Eugene has been turfed out of his apartment and his ex-wife, Ana, is still not returning his calls. Worse still, he’s become so desperate that he’s been forced to move into the spare room of Freddy Frederson, the dopey crocodile who worked at the BearBus terminal featured in the first game. Freddy has a camping trip planned with his mysterious new squeeze, and feeling sorry for his new roommate, offers to bring Eugene along as a third wheel.
Our dysfunctional pair arrives at the Sunny Lakeside campsite to find things are a little tense. There’s a VIP guest kicking up a stink about a broken toilet, a site manager who’s stressed up to her eyeballs, and a guest who returns to the site to find their camping chairs have been swiped! Eager to give himself a renewed sense of purpose, McQuacklin dives into action, eventually finding himself tied up in something much deeper than a simple case of furniture fraud.
From top to tail feathers, The Ghost of Glamping is overflowing with the same charm that made The Secret Salami so popular. The game boasts a bright and characterful look, with stylish but simple environments providing a stage for our delightfully hand drawn characters to waddle about on. Characters are portrayed with decisive lines and daubed in bold colours, giving each person you meet a distinctive and memorable look. In keeping with the overall feel, the menus are simple, chunky, and colourful; just as easy to navigate with a mouse, a controller, or a phone touchscreen.
Mechanically, the game plays exactly the same as The Secret Salami. You investigate the environments and interrogate suspects to collect clues, which you store in your menu as keywords. You’ll need to use these keywords to solve ‘Deducktions’ – short plot hooks that have had all the names, objects and motives removed. It’s up to you to look at all the evidence Eugene has gathered and place the correct keywords into the gaps, spelling out exactly what has gone on. Once you’ve got everything right, Eugene monologues you through the story point and poses the next mystery that needs to be solved. It’s a simple but really effective way to ask players to deduce what’s happening and summarising the plot to make sure they full understand the story.
If you’re struggling to figure out what’s going on, there are three hints available for for each Deducktion, and if they don’t help, you can always turn on Story Mode. This adjusted difficulty gives you really clear indicators about which keywords in your Deducktion are right and which ones are wrong, making it a doddle to solve the conundrum and continue with the tale.
I personally found the puzzle solving in The Ghost of Glamping much more straightforward than I did in The Secret Salami, and it feels like Happy Broccoli Games have chosen to tell a tale that’s slightly less tangled this time around. Where I had to go back and reexamine my evidence a few times to progress through the first game, I breezed through all the Deducktions in the sequel. As a result, despite the two games having roughly the same 2-3 hour runtime, The Ghost of Glamping feels like it’s over more quickly, as there’s less hand-wringing and head-scratching to be done.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s smart to reuse the mechanics from the first game wholesale. This is clearly a franchise that’s planned to grow through bite-sized experiences, releasing McQuacklin’s cases episode-by-episode, where the story (and not the gameplay), can be the focus. I’m sure there will be some who wanted innovation in between installments, but since there were no hiccups the first time around and with them being available for pretty a modest price (£8.50 each on Steam) – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I say.
But while the gameplay might be the same, the cast of characters is fresh and new. Aside from the aforementioned Eugene and Freddy, who return from the debut title, The Ghost of Glamping features all new faces. And where The Secret Salami had a few long-standing office stereotypes to send up, the campground is made up of a more eclectic group. There’s Arnoud, a vain and self-centred social media influencer, Emilia, a New Age-y crystal and manifestations girlie, and Matilda, a stern military mum who’s trying her best to toughen up her son. The young Tobi is probably my favourite character of the bunch, as he reminds me a lot of myself in my (long distant) youth! An adorably nerdy little boy who’s in love with a (suspiciously familiar sounding) collectable monster franchise, Tobi spends his time obsessing over the ‘Magikorn Go’ app, and won’t go anywhere without his trading card collection! The hyperfixated, poorly-dressed geek stereotype might be alive and well in 2025, but I see you, Tobi – you my boi.
One area where fans will be unanimously pleased to find no changes is the voice-acting. Just like The Secret Salami, The Ghost of Glamping is fully voice-acted, with Sean Chiplock reprising his role as our overly-serious protagonist. The performances are excellent and really help bring all the wacky characters to life, and Brian David Gilbert once again steals the show as Freddy – his interjections with Tobi about the ‘OP combos’ in his Magikorn decks had me laughing out loud. The writing perhaps isn’t quite as sharp this time around, but I think that The Secret Salami is a particularly tough act to follow. There’s still plenty of decent one-liners, puns, and noir cliches to go around, but it’s hard to compete with subject matter as ubiquitous as office drama.
Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is a perfect follow up to the excellent debut episode, and offers more of the same hilarious crime fighting antics. Rightly or wrongly, the folks at Happy Broccoli Games haven’t taken any risks with this sequel, choosing to use the same tried and tested format to tell a brand new story for Eugene McQuacklin. The story may not be told quite as well this time around, but toting a host of new quirky characters, more witty dialogue, and the same playful visuals and voice-acting, returning fans are sure to love this tale of the otherworldly in the outdoors.
Recommendation Score
In the interest of full disclosure, VGamingNews was provided with a copy of the game in order to conduct this review.
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