Escape From Duckov Is a Mess of Contradictions, and I Can’t Stop Playing It

When I first heard of Escape From Duckov, it felt like a fever dream synthesized just for me. I love cute, cozy games. I have a terrifying number of hours in the soul-crushing hellscape that is Escape From Tarkov. And I love ducks. They're perfect, fat little things that are nature's finest work. On paper, this game should be my magnum opus.

But I’ve been burned before. The extraction shooter genre is littered with the corpses of games that tried and failed to capture that lightning in a bottle. So I went in wary, expecting a shallow parody that would be funny for five minutes before falling apart.

What I found was one of the most competent, charming, and dangerously addictive single-player games I’ve played all year, a game that absolutely nails its core loop while simultaneously fumbling some of its most important features.

The Art of Quacktical Warfare

Let's get the obvious out of the way: the art direction is the main draw, and Team Soda absolutely crushed it. The game is gorgeous, striking a perfect balance between its cute, cartoonish aesthetic and a gritty, post-apocalyptic vibe that honors its source material. The ducks themselves are wonderfully round and expressive, and the sheer variety of tactical gear lets you play "Tactical Barbie" to your heart's content. I had way too much fun recreating my go-to Tarkov AK-103 build and watching it tear through enemy mallards.

The sound design is also shockingly brilliant. Every enemy type has unique footstep sounds and distinct quacks, giving you crucial intel long before you see them. This is essential, because your own duck is practically blind, even with skill upgrades. The quacks only trigger when an enemy is about to engage, giving you a precious few seconds to decide whether to fight or flee.

And when you’re back at your base, this wonderfully smooth, jazzy soundtrack kicks in, playing from a little gramophone in your room. It’s the perfect chill vibe to decompress after a tense raid, and I’m legitimately angry it’s not on Spotify.

A Grind That Keeps on Giving

The "just one more run" syndrome is incredibly strong with this one. At first glance, it looks like a simple top-down shooter, but this game has layers. The progression system is where Duckov truly shines, and it’s a masterclass in making a grind feel rewarding.

You're constantly upgrading your hideout modules, enhancing your duck's personal skills like recoil control and carry weight, and using a massive variety of scavenged junk to do it. It brilliantly rewards hoarding and makes every single item feel like it has a purpose. Other than Tarkov itself, I don't think any game has nailed the extraction progression loop this well. It scratches that perfect itch of feeling tangible progress after every single run.

Sins of the Father

For all it gets right, Duckov’s biggest failing is that it’s a little too faithful to its inspiration. It doesn’t just borrow Tarkov’s best ideas; it also copies some of its absolute worst ones, namely the quest design. The quests fall into two categories: unimaginative fetch quests and abject nonsense.

While it’s funny to see tongue-in-cheek references to notorious Tarkov tasks, it’s not fun to actually play them. There is no good reason for a game to ask you to shoot seven enemies in the left leg, from over 20 meters away, with a specific type of rifle. It cheapens the experience and ties your main story progression to tedious, arbitrary objectives.

This is made worse by the game's over-reliance on randomly generated loot. Your success in completing a quest often hinges entirely on luck, hoping that the one specific item you need will finally spawn in one of the hundreds of containers you’ve already looted. I spent hours just looking for a single syringe, and it brought my entire progression to a dead stop.

A World as Wide as a Puddle

The game's world design doesn't do the gameplay loop any favors. The maps are fairly large, but they feel like a series of funnels, with linear paths connecting a handful of well-designed points of interest. The space in between is mostly empty, lacking the rich environmental storytelling that makes Tarkov’s world feel so oppressive and alive.

This becomes a major problem when you consider the game's length. The developers estimate a 60-80 hour runtime for the main story, and up to 200 hours for completionists. The novelty of being a cute duck with a gun wears off long before then, and the world just isn't interesting enough to carry that kind of playtime. This should have been a tight, 20-hour adventure.

A Softer, Gentler Apocalypse

One of the biggest departures from Tarkov is the death mechanic. Instead of losing your gear forever, dying drops your inventory in a box right where you fell, giving you a chance to go back and retrieve it. It’s a much more forgiving system, but it also completely changes the risk/reward calculation.

Without that oppressive fear of permanent loss, the adrenaline is gone. The tense, high-stakes gameplay that makes Tarkov's brutal loop tolerable is replaced by something that feels more like a chore. It reveals the uglier side of the extraction formula: when you strip away the terror, you're left with a repetitive cycle of fetch quests and inventory management.

The Verdict

I went in expecting a meme and found a gem, albeit a flawed one. Escape From Duckov is a fantastic concept with a brilliant progression system, charming presentation, and a satisfying core gameplay loop. It’s a great, stress-free entry point into the extraction genre for anyone who wants the loot-and-scoot experience without the PvP-induced heart attacks.

It’s held back by slavishly copying some of Tarkov’s worst design habits and a world that’s too shallow to support its massive playtime. But even with its problems, I can’t deny that I’m addicted. The game is just plain fun, and for its ridiculously fair price, it’s an absolute steal. This game has no right to be this good, and if you have any love for looter shooters, you’d be quackers not to try it.

Score: 8.2/10 - A surprisingly deep and addictive shooter that’s a few key updates away from being a true masterpiece.