“Duck Detective”, “Echoes”, “Lorelei and the Laser Eyes”: from Berlin, Bordeaux and Malmö, these three investigation games explore the different facets of the genre, from farcical cartoons to fantasy or cerebral noir series.
After the colleague’s mug, a lunch box has disappeared from the bus company’s fridge. Could this be another Salami Bandit trick? Freshly arrived on the scene, the best detective – who happens to be a duck – will do everything he can to unravel this mystery (and a few others along the way).
Designed by the Berlin studio Happy Broccoli Games, the kindly prankster yet rigorous Duck Detective is one of the latest representatives of an old but still very much alive genre: the detective game. A sort of interactive detective story approached here from the angle of the short story (rather than the epic novel) with gaps, which it is up to us to literally fill by placing the right words (from the clues discovered throughout the offices) in the right places in the sentences of our web-footed hero.
The relationship between an interiority and the world
Not content with introducing a new costumed animal to the private video game pantheon (after the raccoon from Tails Noir, the frog of Frog Detective, the alligator of Brok the InvestiGator…), Duck Detective thus deals head-on with this eternal human ambition: to give meaning to events. And appears as a perfect clear online response to more complex and widely celebrated titles like Return of the Obra Dinn or The Case of the Golden Idol.
In the family of detective games, you asked for the visual novel ? Here is Echoes, from the Bordeaux studio Nova-box (Across the Grooves, End of Lines), multiple-choice ambient game whose outcome depends on our decisions and which brings the dark series (disturbing disappearance, shady little town, etc.) into dialogue with the fantastical.
The main thing is in the head, ours, where the text has its effect, and that of the narrator, who doubts his memories. This is what works Echoes : the relationship between an interiority and the world, and the way in which a personality can freeze or conversely mutate, or even become diluted in the community. In order not to spoil this great experience, it is better not to say more.
A notebook at hand is essential
But the most astonishing video game investigation of the moment is Lorelei and the Laser Eyes from the Swedes of Simogo, who are returning to the cerebral approach of their Device 6without abandoning the sensuality of Sayonara Wild Hearts . A woman wanders through the hotel Letztes Jahr (“last year”, as if Resident Evil visited Marienbad), in which everything is an enigma (the configuration of the place, the way to progress, the reason for our presence).
It’s about art and mathematics, cinema and magic, symbols and myths, mazes, mirrors or, in a meta spirit, video games. We put down the controller, we take notes – having a notebook handy is essential –, we immerse ourselves in the puzzles, we live with them. We also dream about them, sometimes. Something strong and mysterious is at play in the system of never gratuitous correspondences of this masterful work, demanding but never dry, rich and captivating. Which will undoubtedly figure prominently in the list of the most beautiful games of 2024.
Duck Detective (Happy Broccoli Games),sur Switch, Xbox, Mac et PC, 10 € (game in English).Echoes (Nova-box), on Switch and PC, 10€. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes(Simogo/Annapurna Interactive), on Switch and PC, 23€.
