One of the best-reviewed games on Steam is about watching plastic ducks

Valve's own beloved sci-fi puzzle comedy Portal 2 has a user rating of 98% positive on Steam. A handful of indie hits like A Short Hike, The Case of the Golden Idol, TOEM, and Frog Detective 3 go as high as 99% positive. About to join their number, with a rating of 98% positive trending up to 99% in the last 30 days, is Placid Plastic Duck Simulator.

If you haven't heard of Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, you're not alone. Despite accumulating over 3,500 glowing write-ups on Steam, this game about watching ducks float hasn't exactly made waves. (I'm sorry.) That said, over 1,000 people are following it on Twitch, and a video by Irish streamer RTGame where he spends 15 minutes watching it while saying things like, "Fuckin' riveting gameplay," has over 764,000 views

It really is just a game about watching ducks. The only controls are camera controls, and clicking on the toy ducks simply makes them quack. Initially, a single yellow duck floats in a lovingly rendered swimming pool by itself, but as the "duck meter" fills, further fowls fall from the sky. The ducks come in different colors and patterns, some striped, some checked, one in full clown makeup. A couple of them have propellers, one on its hat, which it uses to fly around. Still, all you the player can do is watch as the sun sinks and the ducks float. 

In the months since its release, Placid Plastic Duck Simulator has sold over 70,000 copies, as developers Turbolento Games revealed to the GameDiscoverCo 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 made as part of an internal game jam two-and-a-half years into Starsand's development. They threw it on Steam with "zero marketing", and were pleased to see "at least two big Japanese Twitter pages" post about it on the day of release. It took off in Asia first, and has now spread to the west.

Turbolento put its success down to the fact that "Players tell their own stories" as the ducks bob about, particularly while streaming. It's a cheap game too, one you might pick up on a whim, though there is more going on than its pricetag might suggest. As the devs put it, "people throw 2 dollars into a game that it's supposed to be a joke, only to find out that there are 47 different handpainted ducks to collect, several weird interactions, environmental events, one UFO, achievements, secrets, and a soundtrack to vibe on. They are happy and leave a positive review to share that happiness with more people."

Though on a much smaller scale, it reminds me of the way Coffee Stain Studios took a game jam prototype made as a joke after finishing tower-defense shooter Sanctum 2, released it, and made a smash hit out of Goat Simulator. Turbolento intend to continue supporting Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, with an expansion called Quacking the Ice that adds a winter location and "increased chilling" this month, and plan to add multiplayer support some time around March next year.

TOPICS
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Read more
A plastic duck dressed like a circus weightlifter
The 5th highest-rated game on Steam in 2022 is back with a multiplayer sequel
Ropuka cutting grass with a blue-roofed house and red television.
I've already spent 25 hours with this idle game where an adorable grass-cutting frog keeps me company on my desktop, and it's safe to say I'm obsessed
A banana, on its own, in an orange void.
That Banana clicker game is somehow still one of Steam's most-played games, with 100K+ concurrents seeing it consistently outranking the likes of Call of Duty and Helldivers 2
A city with buildings, cars, and roads seen from above
Steam reviewers finally trolled me: I bought a game they called 'calm' and 'relaxing' before I noticed those were the 'funny' reviews
Birds in a garden in Birdfull
This cosy birdwatching idle game has me leaving behind my binoculars and enjoying the hobby from the comfort of my desktop
Cards swirl in an interdimensional vortex in Balatro's trippy intro sequence.
LocalThunk gave up making Balatro for 3 months but resumed because 'I was bored but the internet was out so I couldn't play Rocket League'
Latest in Sim
An ancient, angry stone mech from No Man's Sky's new Relics update
No Man’s Sky lets you unearth ancient, angry mechs in the astro-archaeology filled Relics update
Dwarf Fortress adventure mode art
After 23 years of making Dwarf Fortress, even its creator is still 'terrified' of drowning all his dwarves with aquifers: 'Part of the problem is we are just not good at videogames'
Tarn Adams, who cofounded Bay 12 Games with his brother Zach, talks about their single-player simulation game "Dwarf Fortress" during an interview at their home office in Poulsbo, Washington, west of Seattle, on December 9, 2022. - A cult favorite among indie game fans, "Dwarf Fortress" has been available for purchase on the Steam online store since December 6, a first for this title that has been distributed for free since its debut in 2006. The real-time management game, set in a medieval-fantasy world and involving overseeing a group of dwarves seeking to build a mighty fortress, has climbed to the fourth best-selling weekly title on Steam. (Photo by Jason Redmond / AFP) (Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)
Dwarf Fortress' creator is so tired of hearing about AI: 'Press a button and it writes a really sh*tty, wrong essay about something—and they still take your job'
Decorations in TCG Card Shop Simulator
TCG Card Shop Simulator finally adds the ability to decorate our stores, and suddenly all my profits are being spent on adorable Pigni posters
A person on a snowmobile riding a track in the forest in game Sledders.
Powder enthusiasts seem pretty pleased with new physics-based realistic snowmobile sim Sledders
Dean Hall at GDC 2025.
Outer space inspired DayZ's Dean Hall to become a modder and game developer, and now he's making a Kerbal successor called Kitten Space Agency
Latest in News
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway