It’s finally here: the long-awaited Nintendo Switch port of the only game that lets you play as a duck that wears a pot on its head to kill your friends with a sniper rifle while they rapidly quack at you. Duck Game is sheer madness in the best way possible, and the Switch is a fantastic home for it.
Duck Game
Developer: Adult Swim Games
Price: $12.99
Platforms: PS4, Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PC, and Ouya
MonsterVine was provided with a Switch code for review
I don’t know how to start a review of Duck Game, because it’s essentially insanity in video game form. You play as a duck, you pick a weird hat/mask to wear, and you kill your friends (locally or online) with a plethora of varied weapons that range from bazookas and laser guns to bibles and Nerf guns. Duck Game even has some addictive singleplayer content to round the package out, making it an incredible bargain for its low price.
The singleplayer content comes in the form of “The Arcade”; a room full of different trials and missions that sharpen your Duck Game skills asand let you earn new hats and gameplay modifiers. Trying to beat your best scores to earn more items is a lot of fun thanks to how diverse the missions are. This diversity also helps you learn the mechanics and nuances of Duck Game far faster, from the basic controls to tricks like chainsaw-sliding and window-breaking. I wouldn’t say the Arcade alone is worth buying Duck Game for, but it serves as excellent supplementary content for the main package.
The goal of Duck Game is to be the last duck standing by any means necessary. You’re dropped into a stage (which can be enormous or tiny) with all sorts of weapons and obstacles around you. That’s pretty much all there is to it, as there aren’t really any rules or objectives outside of causing chaos and killing your opponents. This simplicity is part of what makes Duck Game so fantastic, as new players don’t have much to learn before they can jump into the anarchic fun. Editor-in-Chief Austin Adamson and I had a blast playing a few rounds earlier this week, as each round we played felt like a whole new game where anybody could come out on top.
“A bunch of pixel-art ducks quacking at each other and making enormous explosions of fire and feathers can be a pretty visceral image, but the charming pixel-art keeps things from being too busy or overwhelming.“
Online runs quite well, though there were one or two matches where my duck lagged a bit, leading to a death or two that I didn’t really deserve, though these situations were few and far between. Rage-quitting seems to have little to no consequence as well, which means you can get cheated out of experience/items that come from completing matches if your opponents were getting a bit too salty.
The art of Duck Game is pretty basic, which works entirely in the game’s favour. A bunch of pixel-art ducks quacking at each other and making enormous explosions of fire and feathers can be a pretty visceral image, but the charming pixel-art keeps things from being too busy or overwhelming.
The Final Word
Duck Game is many things, but I think it’s best described as weird, simple, and anarchic fun. I’m hoping that Adult Swim Games finds a way to deal with ragequitters online, but other than that, I had nonstop fun with Duck Game.
MonsterVine Review Score: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
