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Idle games are one of the most surprising niches of recent years, even if the name of the genre is something of a misnomer. For the first time, these games are typically anything but idle, as you click frantically until you reach a point where the game just starts to run itself. Now, Placid plastic duck simulator truly is an idle game: you do absolutely nothing, but watch some plastic ducks floating in a pool. And I’m here to tell you that it’s one of the highest rated games on Steam.
As first reported from the excellent GameDiscoverCo news bulletin, PPDS extensionThe popularity of on Steam is not a sudden spike. It is, to be more reasonable, a series of highs since its original release in July of this year. Since then, the barely interactive game has received over 3,500 “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on Steam, currently clocking an almost unheard of 98% positive ratings. And why? Um…
On one level, this is nothing more than watching rubber ducks float in a blandly rendered backyard pool. You start out with one yellow duck, but as an on-screen duck meter fills up, new ducks fall from the sky. These come with their own designs, perhaps sporting a headband or top hat and pipe, or they can be cleverly disguised with a sprinkled donut.
Your interaction is limited to awkwardly moving the camera, rotated to a selected duck. The view gently sways up and down with the water, while the serene background noises of birds chirping and the wind blowing soundtrack the banality. (Or you can turn on the awful music, which you shouldn’t.)
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Thing is, a lot more effort has been put in than it deserves, and as ready as I was to roll my eyes and shut down, it’s been running on my desktop for a couple of hours now. There is a day/night cycle, with the bi-level pool features lighting up at night and the natural soundtrack shifting to the cicadas. Beyond the pool is the ocean and if you look you may see a pod of dolphins swimming past. Oh, and of course there’s DLC that adds more models to the ever-increasing number of ducks.
All of this was created by Italian developers Tunnel Vision Studio as a silly break from developing their actual game, an open-world survival simulator Stars and sand. It was part of an internal game jam at the studio, GameDiscoverCo reports, for which they did “zero marketing”. Due to some attention from some large Japanese and Korean Twitter accounts, and then a few weeks ago from RTGame YouTube account with 2.75 million subscriberscontinues to capture people’s attention and imagination.
The fact that it only costs $2 is probably a big part of the success of its review. It’s hard to envy something so sweetly silly when it’s so cheap, and cynical as I want to be, I can’t stop double-checking to see what ducks have arrived, and I got inexplicably excited when a small plane flew over that vault. Also, once, for reasons I don’t understand, one of my ducks escaped via a propeller on her head and flew into the sea.
Ducks really do have different behaviors, even if that really amounts to floating a little differently. I wonder if simply sparing the player almost everything about a game makes the little elements that remain that much more meaningful. Either way, I find I can’t argue with the reviews it’s been receiving. It’s ridiculous and deserves that 98% positivity that is usually reserved for the likes of Half-life 2 or Stardew Valley.
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