Duck Creator

Genre: Misc.

Players: 1

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Review:

Duck Creator, released in 2021 on PC and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024, is indeed a piece of software where you create a duck. I’ll let the full description on Nintendo.com elaborate:

“Duck Creator Create your Duck! Customize as you like! Put a hat on your duck!”

Once again, that is the full description of this software on Nintendo.com, as written by Duck Creator’s publisher. And… yeah, that’s pretty indicative of just exactly what it is we’re getting here.

This game uses simple 3D visuals for the duck itself, and a mostly-static image of 3D visuals for the background (albeit with moving 2D clouds for the three outdoor locales). Oddly, the backgrounds all seem to have been put through an odd filter outlining edges with red and blue, which is a bit unsettling to look at.

The only sound in this game is a duck quack, which happens when you change menus or when you press the “quack” button on the “duck panel” menu. There is no music, and no other sound.

In the “duck panel” menu, you can alter your spinning duck (it’s always spinning. You cannot stop it or make it do anything else) by changing the length of its beak, the size of its eyes, the length of its neck, the size of its body, the length of its legs, the color of its body, the color of its legs, select one of 22 hats to place on it, and you can press the aforementioned “quack” button.

In the “environment” panel, you can swap the background to house, forest, playground, or penguins.

That is it.

Things you cannot do in this game:

• Change the size of the duck’s beak, other than its length
• Change the color of its beak
• Change the color of its eyes
• Change the type of eyes
• Change the size of its head
• Change the color of the head separate from the body
• Change the color of the neck separate from the body
• Change the thickness of the neck
• Change the tail (it has none)
• Change the wings (it has none)
• Change the type of feet
• Change the color of its hat
• Change the size of its hat
• Change the sound of its quack in any way
• Make it pose
• Make it animate (other than spinning)
• View it from any other angle (other than what it spins to)
• Make it emote
• Control it in any way
• Interact with it in any way
• See it interact with an environment in any way
• See it doing anything other than spinning
• Save it
• See multiple ducks at once
• Reset everything to start over without exiting out of the program
• See its shadow
• Hear its quack echo (though I hear that’s normal for ducks)

Joking aside, this is little more than a character creator, and not a very good one. Even if your only interest here is in creating the duck of your dreams (and if so, I have some serious concerns about your dreams), then you will be disappointed. While Duck Creator does indeed let you create a duck, it’s not very good at letting you make the sort of duck you want, doesn’t give you many options for making that duck, and doesn’t give you any reason to continue making ducks beyond a few minutes of “huh, that’s weird” before getting bored and moving on. Even at the low $1 price this is selling at, it’s the briefest of novelties that just isn’t worth the price.

tl;dr – Duck Creator is an Application where, yes, you create a duck. However, even with that odd premise, Duck Creator doesn’t give players much in the way of options or any reason to play this beyond a brief few minutes of weirdness before moving on out of boredom. Even for only $1, this just isn’t worth it.

Grade: D

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: The “Who asked for this!?” Award

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