Indietail – Goose Goose Duck

So, a while ago, Frosti, NekoJonez, Sarah, JAVM, Danames, Meghan and me played some Among Us in the Support Role discord server because we haven’t gotten the memo yet and because some people still haven’t played too much of it and we’re still having fun because of that. I mean, it is fun: Get in a lobby, curse the devs for removing the witch hat, murder your friends, gaslight other friends until they believe that they killed their friends themselves, and then you win the game because everyone’s doubting themselves. It can be pretty fun and stressful but it’s mostly harmless stuff… and yet, eventually, Among Us loses its charm. Hence, today, I wanted to talk about my first impressions with Goose Goose Duck, which the aforementioned players and I checked out… it’s basically Among Us but with ducks. I wanna talk about my first impressions of it, kind of like in a review… and talk about what problems I have with it but… I’ll most likely just end up comparing it to Among Us because it is in essence an Among Us clone. This is basically my review of an Among Us clone. Yup.

Developer: Gaggle Studios, Inc.
Publisher: Gaggle Studios, Inc.
Genre: 2D, Multiplayer, Social Deception
Release Date: April 29th, 2021
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC
Copy is free.

Anyway, so, you and your crew are on the SS Mother Goose and must work together to solve tasks and get the “Ducks” out. Ducks want to kill all the Geese by sabotaging the ship or by murdering geese in cold blood. So far so good: Since nobody knows what roles other people have, you’ll need to trick, fake and deceive your way to victory. Other roles that can be enabled/disabled in the game include a Dodo Bird that needs to be voted out to win, while a Vulture eats corpses, a Vigilante that can kill anyone once per game with no consequences… and there are many other roles in the game that you can set up as you wish, for a total of more than 20! The game utilizes an account that needs to be created… as well as in-game proximity chat as well as other features such as “flashlight mode” or special game modes.

So far, it’s basically “Modded Among Us” but with ducks. Well, that may describe it quite well but there are some differences. For instance, the map uses hexagon-shaped tiles and is HUGE! I mean it. The game is made to be played with a lot more than just 10 players. I believe lobbies can fit up to 16 players, and I can see that working out well… But I also find it a bit tricky that you cannot play on smaller maps with smaller lobbies. At the same time, the tasks that you have to do are complicated, unintuitive, at times a bit buggy, and some tasks just take way too long and if you fail them, you need to finish the task despite knowing that it’s wrong… and then you can restart afterwards.

While Duck Duck Goose has its pros and features… I just can’t get over the fact that tasks are so overcomplicated. In Among Us, it at times took a few rounds to get what you have to do in certain tasks… but it didn’t leave anyone super confused. “Turn the wheel”, “Fill the canister”, “Polish the ruby”, all super simple and plain, so you can create a lot more in the rounds. Well, in Duck Duck Goose, you may have to fix the TV signal by readjusting antennas and there is a task that requires you to do one step and then upload something and then download again and it’s just… boring? I feel like the trouble me and my friends had with Goose Goose Duck is mostly that the tasks were not only frustrating but they’d often take so much time to complete, if you completed them at all, that it made the game less fun. It’s overcomplicated and annoying.

To be fair, I don’t wanna like Among Us but I and those aforementioned friends still have fun with it from time to time and I got a lot of entertainment out of those four bucks I spent for the game. Meanwhile, Goose Goose Duck has those issues… and it’s just a lot less enjoyable. “But it’s free, Magi!”, you may argue, but it doesn’t feel good to play it because it’s just too much in way too many angles… apart from the cosmetics of course.

Sure, you can buy a DLC for two bucks or whatever in Among Us for some pets, hats, and costumes… but then you essentially got a lot of those. In Duck Duck Goose, you earn coins by playing and you can use those to get items in the market. For most outfits, however, you’ll need to buy golden coins that you only get a limited amount of. Those golden coins cost A TON of real-life money and can even buy you stuff like a pet that can boost your other coin income. You also get these materials by completing tasks in-game and then you can eventually craft a special outfit but the drop rates are so minuscule… It doesn’t feel alright. Don’t Starve Together has something like that with the crafting system and it feels a lot better in that game because you use existing outfits that you don’t like to get better stuff that you do like. Now, obviously, those cosmetics in Duck Duck Goose aren’t “pay to win”/they don’t make you win more. It’s just cosmetics… but when I see stuff like that in a game that is copying a different game a lot to jump on the hype, then I get quite “sus”, you may call it, as it reeks of people exploiting children’s easy access to their parents’ credit card info and stuff.

But then again, overall, I can see Goose Goose Duck being fun for people in big lobbies… once… But then you’ll get frustrated and you’ll just play Town of Salem, First Class Trouble, Among Us, or Werewolves. I mean, I don’t see a point in choosing this over Among Us if it’s the exact same thing “but with ducks” and in worse. I hate to say it but Among Us being “easy to understand but hard to master” is the reason why it got so popular in the first place, among streamers, YouTubers, players, etc. 

Anyways, just a little post on this. Hope you enjoyed this one! Sure, Goose Goose Duck is free but I find it frustrating and a bit annoying honestly. So, not my cup of tea, especially when you think about the fact that all the features they added into the game were “overpriced cosmetics”, “content that already exists as mods in Among Us”, and “ducks/geese”. It’s not like they reinvented the social deception game genre in any way and they aren’t doing something different, like First Class Trouble does. It’s the opposite actually: They’re trying to get the same hype going as Among Us, a game from 2018, by re-creating the same thing and then they just implement features that someone else thought of.

Obviously, it’s hard to “re-invent” something but at least you can put your own spin on it. Using the same animations, similar sound effects, similar maps, same mechanics, and then selling overpriced cosmetics in a game to enrich yourself is… I feel like it’s scammy but maybe I’m blowing this up a bit here. Hence, no recommendation.

Cheers!

This post is part of the Blaugust 2021 event. For more information on that, check out this post!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!