My Favorite New Video Game Involves Clicking on Ducks
Not now, babe, I'm about to get a Duck president.
I don’t know how it came to this, as I really, truly hate incremental games (or clicker and idle games, as you might know them). Cookie Clicker? Get that out of my face. Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms? Pass. However, I really do like Duck Duck Clicker.
I just don’t like clicking on a PNG repeatedly for money, or having something idle in the background while I wait for points to collect so I can buy more things that give me more points in the background. Which then gives me points to collect so I can etc. etc.
But this small, simple little indie browser game has sat right in my Firefox tabs all day as I’ve written about thirsty Baldur’s Gate 3 speedruns and Lethal Company in VR. It’s free from clutter and gets right to the point: petting ducks so you can get more ducks. And seriously, who doesn’t want to spend all day petting ducks?
What is Duck Duck Clicker?
Created by Hamdy Elzanqali, Duck Duck Clicker is an idle clicker game where players collect “Duckets” to purchase duck-based upgrades. Each upgrade provides more Duckets through either clicking on your duck (called “Duck Power”), or waiting a second and allowing your automatic Ducket producers to create more Duckets (the “Autoducker”). Purchases start small, like the Tiny Duckling, with further options available, like—wait.
Sorry. One second. I have to stop writing this and click on a Golden Duck. Dope, I now have $297 million in Duckets. Epic.
Anyway. Tiny Ducklings just give you 1 Ducket per click, but bigger upgrades like the Duck Pond give you five per second. Slowly, you can work your way to the Duck Industry (40,000 Duckets per second) and President Duck (14k per click), and advance on to Duck Country, Leader Duck, and Duck Continent. The final two purchases are Cosmic Duck (100 million Duckets per click) and Duck Universe (100 million Duckets per second), costing 100 trillion and 800 trillion Duckets each, respectively.
Gotta spend Duckets to make Duckets, as the saying goes.
So, what’s the end goal of Duck Duck Clicker? Reaching Cosmic Duck and Duck Universe? Collecting all the little hats and wearables your duck can own? Accomplishing all the achievements? Eh, I don’t really think there’s a point. In my case, it’s just a fun little game to pass the time between writing articles and checking Slack.
Elzanqali suggests I’m the exact target audience. “Have you been in a situation where you felt the unbearable urge to mindlessly keep clicking on a very very adorable ducks?” the developer wrote in Duck Duck Clicker’s itch.io description. “Search no more! I’ve got the best (I think) duck clicker game to ever exist on the planet for you.”
As for why Elzanqali created the game? “Because I can and I wanted to.” Hey, simple enough. Who am I to separate an artist from their ducks? Go play Duck Duck Clicker for free in your web browser on itch.io, and consider sending two bucks to Elzanqali to download the game.
(feature image: Hamdy Elzanqali)
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