Thank You

It’s been 5 years since the release of Duck Game. 1 year for the OUYA version, 1 year for PC, 2 years of updates and PS4 and 1 more year of Switch development.

It’s been ~10 Years since I graduated from high school and moved to Vancouver, 2 years of college, 1 awesome year at Kerberos and another year working in Mobile games (-.-‘). Finally, less than 1 year as an indie developer before Bawb from OUYA asked me if I was working on anything and I showed him a prototype for this duck game I was working on.

So many people have helped the game be what it is today. Countless hours of testing with friends, support from everyone in the community and at shows, so much priceless feedback and encouragement from everyone that the game wouldn’t exist without. I’ve always thought that persistence was my greatest feature short of actual know how, and I think Duck Game is some proof of what persistence can accomplish.

I’ve worked 5 years on Duck Game, but it’s not really ‘mine’. It’s about as much ‘my’ game as Hotline Miami, Nidhogg, Super Mario World and the hundreds of other games that inspired its existence are. It’s designed by me about as much as it’s designed by everyone who helped me test it and showed me what it should be. It’s just a big duck themed AMV of things that I like, it’s music wouldn’t exist without games like Comix Zone, Thunder Force, Lyle in Cube Sector, and Sonic 3. The Duck’s run cycle is legit traced from James Pond 3, not unlike so many Megamans and Marios before. It has temple themed random levels because Spelunky is a cool game.

Duck Game was just a janky platformer engine until my friend Ryleigh told me I should make it into a multiplayer game, all the best things came from playing the game with people. I still remember when we where playing the Game Maker prototype years ago in the old house, when my friend Tanner said something along the lines of “Man, it’d be hilarious if they could flap their little duck wings”. And so they did, and so it was~

I can’t really bring myself to name names, if I try to name everyone I will most definitely forget somebody important and make a big mess of it. Not even sure if people want to be named, life is a complicated thing. Sometimes people are happier in the background (Hi!!). Lots of really good people are mentioned in the credits in Duck Game, though I just know I’ve forgotten a million names in there as well. But a scrolling wall of names never does justice to the mass of people they represent, even with cool music, so I can’t help but feel a bit bad.

This post is to say thank you, to everyone, for everything you’ve done in support of me and Duck Game. As many times as I’ve been told that I deserve it, I’ll always feel I fluked into something excellent and I’m just riding the wave. Fluke or not, I’m so happy it could mean something to someone, the game always meant a whole lot to me and seeing people enjoy it means that all the good things in the world that lead me to making Duck Game are still alive.

I’ll accept with poise, with grace, when the draw my name from the lottery

And they’ll say “All the salt in the world couldn’t melt that ice”.

I’m the one who gets away, I’m a New Jersey success story 

And they’ll say, lord give me the chance to shake that hand.

I have one last wish, and it’s from the heart

Just let me down, just let me down easy.

-Big Casino, Jimmy Eat World