Duck Detective 2 Postmortem
Preamble
It’s been a few months now since the second Duck Detective adventure, The Ghost of Glamping released back in May 2025.
We started working on this sequel before the first game “Secret Salami” came out. Without even knowing if the original game would be successful, we placed all our game shaped eggs into the duck shaped basket. I think the data was already there to suggest it was a sound plan, but more crucially for us, we have the time or creative energy to come up with a fresh idea. So a second case was a reasonable way to keep the team afloat and paddling forwards.
Number Stuff
- Critical and financial success, sitting at 98% overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam after 5 months.
- We sold more copies in the first 24 hours compared to the 1st game, but the tail diminished quicker.
- Financially, the game is tracking around ~20% lower than the 1st game. (Wishlists were also ~20% lower on launch too.)
- However, the release gave a huge boost to the 1st game’s sales, which is performing much better than expected for the 2nd year of sales.
- Hard to untangle the symbiotic relationship of the two games financially - but a nice feedback loop.
Opinions
- I infer that there will be diminishing returns for future Duck Detective cases, but will lead to an overall boost in revenue due to the boost of visibility to the older cases.
- We simultaneously shipped on consoles (Xbox, PS5 & Switch) on release day and while individually the revenue is a magnitude lower than Steam, together it definitely adds up and I wouldn’t disregard them as a part of the ecosystem.
- It was much harder to get into showcases, awards, etc. Anecdotally, hearing the same from other teams for future showcases too.
Design
Making a sequel offers a unique set of challenges. How do you do something that is the same but better, not too similar, but also not too different? We unknowingly followed Sid Meier’s 33/33/33 rule for sequels:
- A third should be established
- A third should be improved
- A third should be novel
For us, we kept the structure the same, improved our lacklustre hint system and added a sidekick who followed you around on your sleuthing. I believe we made a sequel that justified its existence with enough novelty, but it was definitely not easy to reach.
Conclusion
Overall, it never gets easier to make a game. Overconfidence arises because we did it before, but it’s always difficult and painful to get a game over the finish line. I was much more stressed leading up to release compared to the 1st game as we began to realise the likelihood of capturing lightning in a bottle twice is exceedingly small. Ultimately, I only felt relief afterwards, not joy - which is kind of sad. Now, months later I feel much happier about it all - but the stress was unhealthy and I will try to work on enjoying the process more than the outcome.
We have chosen not to begin on Duck Detective 3 this year because we want to make a worthy entry to the series and that requires ingenuity. For the 33/33/33 rule to hold, we need more time to work things out.
Joni