This week’s recommendations once again come from very different corners of the entertainment spectrum, with Features Editor Jen Lennon tackling a cozy mystery game and Film Editor Jacob Oller praising Jack White’s new solo album.

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami

It’s raining outside the BearBus office as private investigator Eugene McQuacklin inspects the building. There’s a flyer advertising a new bus route to the Salsiccia Mountains. McQuacklin once dreamed of taking his wife there, but that fantasy is long gone, lost somewhere in the haze of addiction and back rent and divorce papers. Now he must solve the case that awaits him on the other side of those dilapidated double doors. It’s not a misguided quest for redemption; he just doesn’t have enough money to get back home. Unless he wants to walk all the way across town when this is all over, he needs to earn enough money to take the bus back to his office/apartment so he can live it up again. It would be pretty bleak — er, bleak — if McQuacklin weren’t a duck addicted to white bread. As it stands, Happy Broccoli Games’ Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a loving ode to noir elements that finds the right balance between comedy and mystery. A funny game that takes the genre seriously.

Released in May, Duck Detective is the latest addition to the small but growing sub-subgenre of bird-themed detective games (other examples include the excellent Aviary Lawyer And Chicken Police(which will have a sequel coming later this year). You play as McQuacklin, a down-on-his-luck duck who is called in to investigate a case of theft: lunch theft. A sandwich has been stolen by someone leaving teasing messages signed “The Salami Bandit.” After getting to know everyone who works in the office, your first task is to figure out who your client is. The initial call was rushed and short on details, but you were desperate. “Looking for a job. Will do almost anything,” you posted on Blue skyand then you were wading through puddles and office politics at the same time.

Of course, there’s more to it than meets the eye. The game is short, about 2-3 hours per playthrough, but it features several twists and turns as you unravel the central mystery. To uncover the identity of the salami bandit, you’ll need to investigate the office, interview suspects, and fill in deductions (not a typo) in your notebook (think The Case of the Golden Idol(but less overtly weird, somehow, even though this world is populated by anthropomorphic animals). The gameplay and puzzle-solving aren’t particularly difficult, but that’s not really the point: this game is just a blast to play. Even if you’re not into video games but do like mysteries, you might want to give this one a try: it’s available on PC, Mac, and Linux, alongside Nintendo Switch and Xbox, and the controls are about as simple as you’ll find in a game outside of a visual novel. It’s also fully voiced, which is always a good thing. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami may sound crazy, but it’s clear that the team at Happy Broccoli take their duck detective work seriously. (Jen Lennon)

by Jack White No name

It’s not like Jack White has ever been off the rock ‘n’ roll radar since he launched The White Stripes into the mainstream with White blood cells (and launch the mainstream back into the garage), but he’s taken the kind of artistic side streets that seem especially appealing after his massive success. White made music with The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather before embarking on a solo career, diving deep into his bluesy roots for Thunderbus and giving free rein to his rock virtuosity in LazaretBut after a decade since that last, wild, uncompromising album (and with a few forgettable experiments in between), White his sound has been retrieved to grungy, crunchy basics with No namewhich I can’t believe is so good.

Now that we’ve just wrapped up our 2004 retrospective, I’ve got some nostalgia on my mind. So while I don’t want to rush back to the early ’00s, No name is a dirty, infectious slice of throwback guitar rock that will remind you just how powerful The White Stripes were at their peak. A few chords, an earworm bassline, a relentless drumbeat—that was all they needed to go from DIY Detroit shows to every commercial ever made and every sports game ever held. No name returns to that deceptively simple sound, with White’s slurping guitar slithering through instantly catchy riffs as his angry, reedy howl soars above them. White also initially released the album, in secret, as a free vinyl with every purchase at his record stores in Detroit, London and Nashville. A charming old-head move from a classic rock star.

And when those lucky record buyers went home and turned it on, “Old Scratch Blues” set their players ablaze. A sultry lick morphs into a chugging rock engine that runs unabated for five songs. “Bless Yourself” sounds like White channeling Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha—if Zack de la Rocha looked a little like Wormtongue’s heroin slur—ranting over metallic funk in sharp bursts. “Archbishop Harold Holmes” nearly has him making one of E-40’s inventively rhyming lyrical stumbling blocks. But “That’s How I’m Feeling” is surely the album’s breakout track, simply because it has a memorable chorus that splits the difference between pure, lean rock and something Apple might buy up to sell phones. It’s not so much that the song is poppy, but that it’s reminiscent of the post-millennium era, when The White Stripes helped pioneer that kind of rock become poppy.

White focuses on familiar subjects throughout: being broke, being disillusioned, being unloved, being able to play guitar like lightning. Although there is a religious theme, it is mainly about devils, gods and preachers who point to the big, romantic, loud-as-hell music that White wants to make. Garage rock is back in this crazy solo show, and it is biblical. (Jacob Oller)