Valve’s own beloved sci-fi puzzle comedy Portal 2 has a 98% positive user rating on Steam (opens in new tab). A handful of indie hits like A Short Hike, The Case of the Golden Idol, TOEM and Frog Detective 3 go up to 99% positive. Placid Plastic Duck Simulator is about to join their number, with a rating of 98% positive trending up to 99% in the last 30 days (opens in new tab).
If you’ve never heard of Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, you’re not alone. Despite collecting more than 3,500 glowing articles (opens in new tab) on Steam, this game about watching ducks float hasn’t really caused much controversy. (I’m sorry.) That said, over 1000 people follow it on Twitch (opens in new tab)and a video from Irish streamer RTGame (opens in new tab) which he watches for 15 minutes while saying things like “Fuckin’ immersive gameplay” has over 764,000 views
It’s really just a game about watching ducks. The only controls are camera controls, and clicking on the toy ducks will make them quack. Initially, a single yellow duck floats alone in a lovingly rendered pool, but as the “duck meter” fills, more birds fall from the sky. The ducks come in a variety of colors and patterns, some striped, some checked, one in full clown makeup. A few have propellers, one on his hat, which he flies around. Yet as a player you can only watch the sun go down and the ducks float.
In the months since its release, Placid Plastic Duck Simulator has sold more than 70,000 copies, as developers Turbolento Games revealed to the GameDiscoverCo (opens in new tab) newsletter. Turbolento also developed a survival game called Starsand, a desert world survival game that Chris road tested last year, under the name Tunnel Vision Studio. As the designers told GameDiscoverCo, Placid Plastic Duck Simulator was created as part of an internal game jam two and a half years after Starsand’s development. They pitched it to Steam with “zero marketing”, and were pleased to see “at least two major Japanese Twitter pages” reporting about it on the day of release. It first started in Asia and has now spread to the west.
Turbolento attributed its success to the fact that “Players tell their own stories” as the ducks float around, especially while streaming. It’s also a cheap game, one you might pick up on a whim, although there’s more to it than the price tag suggests. As the developers put it, “people throw $2 into a game that’s supposed to be a joke, only to find out there are 47 different hand-painted ducks to collect, several weird interactions, environmental events, one UFO, achievements, secrets, and a soundtrack to vibe to. They are happy and leaving a positive review to share that happiness with more people.”
Although on a much smaller scale, it reminds me of the way Coffee Stain Studios took a prototype game jam created as a joke after completing tower defense shooter Sanctum 2, released it and made Goat Simulator a huge success . Turbolento plans to continue supporting Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, with an expansion called Quacking the Ice (opens in new tab) that’s adding a winter location and “increased chilling” this month, and plans to add multiplayer support sometime around March next year.
