My sister turned me onto the Duck Detective games. She's a fan of both funny animal games and puzzle games, I am too honestly. I played through the first one and had a fun time even if some puzzles got a bit moon logic-y. These games are usually fairly cheap, so I picked up the sequel Duck Detective and the Ghost of Glamping and I was in need of a little game to play, so I booted it up.

There's not a noticeable difference in gameplay between the two Duck Detective games. You still explore a little world space where you question people, make de”duck”tions about their character and collect evidence. Each bit of information you collect adds a keyword to your journal. Those keywords are how you solve cases Mad Libs style. I do think the game did a much better at laying out how all the clues and suspects connect to each other. A new gameplay feature that I don't think was included in the first game was when you fill in the blanks in your journal it would show you which ones were wrong. It made the game easier, so you weren't just guessing randomly to see which word was wrong.

The art style is still a cutesy paper cut out aesthetic. Everything pops with color and is easy to read, which is important for a detective game where you hunt for clues. There seemed to be more little cutscenes sprinkled throughout this game, but there's still not much in the way of animations. Voice acting is pretty good. The Duck Detective himself is a standout performance. He is constantly angsty in that private detective way and always talks like he's in a film noir. The music is appropriately noir and moody fitting Duck Detective's washed up PI vibe.

We join Duck Detective as he has now moved into the apartment of Freddy, the gator that hired you from the first game. Freddy is an overeager friend who wants to help Duck anyway he can, much to the chagrin of Duck. Duck is behind on his newest book, stalking his ex online, and ignoring letters from the government. To get him out of his slump, Freddy takes Duck camping at the old haunted sanatorium. When you get there, you learn there's a mystery afoot as several camping chairs went missing. After investigating the other campers, a military officer and her son, a chess influencer and his assistant, a traveling bum, and the camp manager, Duck begins piecing the plot together. You get to hear a ghost story about the sanatorium, which is the one time I think these games ever showed blood. Knowing this game and the world it's set up, I knew the ghost story was just that, a story, there wouldn't be any ghost.

Okay, so story spoilers here, skip to “All in all” to avoid them. Turns out that the military officer was selling state secrets to a spy for a chance to get photos of the chess influencer. The spy was the influencer's assistant who was working for the West Kanten government. This was something in the background of the first game as well, that Duck Detective lives in a world that seems to be similar to East and West Germany, where two countries are locked in a cold war with spies and restricted travel & trade between the two. It's a weirdly deep background lore for a funny animal mystery game, but I'm here for it. You can decide to arrest the officer, the assistant, and the influencer. I only arrested the first two as the influencer really didn't know or play any part in the scheme. The moral complication of arresting them is the officer has a child you'd be taking them from, but we learn the traveling bum is the kid's long lost father. And the assistant is also Freddy's girlfriend, so you'd be hurting poor Freddy who needs all the help he can get. After Duck Detective cracks the case and makes the arrests, the cops also arrest him on account of all the government notices he ignored, setting up what I imagine will be a third game in the series.

All in all, Ghost of Glamping is another fun entry in the Duck Detective series. I enjoyed the writing, because I'm a sucker for a film noir story, even if it's a humorous take on one. The mystery was engaging and much better plotted out. There were lots of funny little moments, but nothing too laugh out loud like the first game. This game also felt a bit shorter than the first game. Still if you enjoy a little mystery game that's fun and light, I can heartily recommend Duck Detective, maybe at a sale price though.