Duck Side of the Moon

I went in expecting a goofy duck joke delivery system and came out genuinely moved by an overworked astronaut duck's coming-of-age story. That pivot is the quiet magic at the center of Duck Side of the Moon, Starbrew Games' debut from a small Dutch studio that clearly knew the kind of game it wanted to make before it wrote a single line of code. It is a zero-combat, zero-death third-person collectathon built around floating asteroid belts, talking geode residents, and the slow, satisfying act of turning a crashed spaceship into a cozy home base. The core loop works like this: you play as Doug, who crash-lands after falling asleep on the job (the story's burnout-and-rest theme is introduced immediately and carried all the way to the credits). From there you gather Bolts and raw materials by mining floating islands and completing quests for the Geodes, then return to the ship to spend them on upgrades. The ship modules range from practical, like storage expansion to ease the clunky one-ore-per-slot inventory, to purely cosmetic, like a basketball hoop or a gardening room. Your onboard computer, Chippy, provides both comic relief and a surprisingly touching narrative reason for why exploration is gated early on. The movement system is the standout mechanic: Doug switches fluidly between waddling and free flight, with spring-loaded launchpads adding verticality and a sonar quack that can be held to hunt for hidden items. It feels genuinely freeing to move around in, which matters when the map is compact. The second area, Boogiedale, opens things up considerably and is where the game's variety shines. Minigames include bowling, a shooting gallery, floor-is-lava challenges, a DJ mixing station, star races, and a hi-striker. They earn tokens for a nearby shop, and chasing high scores gives achievements real purpose across the game's roughly 40 total. The soundtrack by Joost Rol is the kind of work that makes you stop and listen rather than tune out, and an in-game jukebox lets you replay tracks once you find the music discs scattered across the world. Outfit hunting, from chef uniforms to frog costumes hidden in treasure chests, adds a collectathon texture that fans of that genre will recognise and appreciate. The honest caveats are worth flagging. The crafting and ship upgrade tree runs shallow: Bolts come quickly, much of the tree is cosmetic, and several higher-tier mining tools are never strictly required, which takes the edge off resource gathering. The waypoint system is weak for a game built on open exploration, with objective markers only appearing once you are already close, which turns some simple tasks into minutes of directionless floating. There are also a handful of bugs at launch, including a tool-switching issue that requires a reload to fix and treasure chests that occasionally produce nothing. The point-of-no-return into Boogiedale is strict, so completionists should sweep Lightholm thoroughly before leaving. A post-launch update has since added travel between the two zones, which softens that particular sting. At four to five hours for a full run, the length question is real and the discourse around it is fair, but the pacing never feels padded and the game knows exactly when to end.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

Be the first to comment on Duck Side of the Moon.