This year has truly been one of indies. We’ve seen countless remarkable games produced by independent studios, often consisting of small teams or even single developers. Many of these games embody the true spirit of indie creativity—they’re weird, quirky, and innovative, offering fresh perspectives and experiences or reinventing established genres in exciting ways.
**A Fresh Take on the Extraction Shooter Genre**
*Escape from Duckov* falls into this latter category. It takes the extraction shooter genre and gives it a distinctive Team Soda spin, transforming it into a cartoonish yet genuinely fun experience that’s as strange as it is engaging.
As its name suggests, *Escape from Duckov* is heavily inspired by *Escape from Tarkov* and other extraction shooters, featuring the familiar loot-extract-repeat loop at its core. However, unlike many extraction shooters that lean towards a militaristic, gritty, and realistic tone, *Duckov* adopts a more lighthearted approach. The game places you in a world of humanoid ducks battling for valuable tech and resources.
You take control of a custom-made duck character tasked with looting and extracting from various maps, bringing back resources and valuables to your base where you can spend and build from the ground up. Dying in the wild means losing all your loot, although it can be recovered by looting your own corpse on a subsequent run.
**Gameplay and Mechanics**
The combat and gameplay unfold from a top-down, somewhat isometric perspective, with your vision limited to a cone in front of you. This means enemies can still flank you and approach from behind, unseen despite the aerial view. The shooting is meaty, responsive, and oddly satisfying—especially compared to many modern first-person shooters that often lack impactful feedback.
You also need to manage wounds, energy, and hydration. While these survival elements add an extra layer of depth, they don’t become overly burdensome thanks to the abundance of healing items, food, and drinks available. Overall, these mechanics contribute to a richer gameplay experience without overcomplicating it.
**Quests and Progression**
*Duckov* provides a variety of quests on each map, designed to offer a sense of progression and a fun way to unlock new tech and buildable structures. These missions add meaningful goals to each run, transforming your expeditions into planned ventures rather than random resource gathering.
The game starts with a smaller map where you’ll spend your initial hours gathering tools and upgrading yourself to a respectable level—unlocking access to better guns and defenses. The larger, more expansive map can be reached for a fee in in-game currency and presents a greater challenge. It’s as difficult as it is vast, requiring skill and preparation. Dying on this map means paying the ferryman again, making each defeat costly.
The maps are dynamic and lively, featuring enemy factions fighting each other, wild animals attacking players and NPCs, fishing mechanics, and obstacles that can be permanently cleared—opening up new pathways between the world and your bunker.
**Single-Player Focus and Its Drawbacks**
One notable aspect of *Duckov* is that it’s a single-player game. Extraction shooters are typically multiplayer or co-op experiences, and while Duckov’s personal approach works to some extent, it can quickly become tedious.
The biggest issue here is grind. Without multiplayer elements, the constant back-and-forth trips into the overworld can wear thin. While looting and combat are fun, they lose their appeal after dozens of extractions. Searching endlessly for an obscure quest item can become frustrating and exhausting.
Accessing the larger map requires a substantial investment in-game currency, forcing players to grind on the smaller map to afford another trip. Given the danger of enemies on the bigger map, this loop of grind, risk, and reward can feel repetitive.
Dynamic events add some challenge as well—periodic storms and elite robot squads appear at night, compelling you to extract early or wait out these events. While waiting it out isn’t a huge problem, it introduces additional tedium to an already grind-heavy experience.
**Final Thoughts**
If *Duckov* had less grind, its base management and extraction mechanics could truly shine. As it stands, the game becomes less enjoyable over time, which is unfortunate considering its many strengths.
On a positive note, *Escape from Duckov* offers mod support out of the box, so there’s potential for the community to address some of the game’s shortcomings. While that’s no substitute for a solid base experience, it’s an encouraging sign.
*Duckov* is different, strange, and outright weird. Honestly, it’s a bit unclear who its main audience is. However, it stands as an indie innovation, one that I welcome enthusiastically. I look forward to seeing Team Soda continue to develop games with their unique and distinctive style.
https://www.destructoid.com/reviews/escape-from-duckov-review/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=escape-from-duckov-review