Duck Side of the Moon Review — Quacksternaut

Stories about astronauts exploring new, far-off planets are rarely considered relaxing. When your narrative begins with a crash landing on an alien world, you’ll usually find the tale that follows to be one of hardship, desperate survival, and maybe even horror, starring some freaky alien born from twisted evolution beyond the stars. It is, therefore, a rare treat that a game can manage to take a devastating crash landing amongst the stars and use it to tell a story of cozy exploration, indulging in the wonder of discovery without underlying themes of desperation and savagery. Your protagonist being a cute little duck probably goes a long way to help with this goal, too.

Duck Side of the Moon is an incredibly adorable and incredibly cozy exploration game that follows a brave duck astronaut on their mission to find a new homeworld. After crash-landing on an archipelago-like asteroid belt, it’s up to players to explore, meet and help the colorful local geode-people, collect minerals, and upgrade their gadgets and ship, taking in the beautiful sights and sounds of a hand-crafted deep space in the process.

Duck Side of the Moon takes its status as a cozy exploration game seriously. There are no threats, no high stakes, and nothing to rush you past the pace you feel like playing the game. Exploration is done with incredibly freeing, zero-g flight mechanics that let you soar through the environment as you wish, or take to the ground and waddle freely. Movement in the game is well executed, with a lot of freedom in how you traverse, as well as tons of gadgets and environmental doohickies to make travel faster or simply more fun. Objects like your built-in booster or spring-loaded launchpads make it easy to get anywhere in the game without the worry of platforming puzzles or pitfalls.

The story progresses as you talk to the locals and complete small tasks for them, with no real reason to rush. Rarely are you forced to craft a gadget or upgrade to complete a mission, making the gathering and crafting systems present in the game very low stakes. You mostly just grab crafting materials as you pass them while exploring, zapping them with your little mining laser and floating past the minerals as they come. Crafting recipes are simple and cheap, with the most expensive upgrades being ship improvements, which require bolts, a unique currency you get from exploring and doing missions. Crafting in the game is so simple that I kind of wish they did away with the inventory system, which can quickly become full as each ore you pick up takes a space on its own. This is especially strange because important, quest-related objects take up space in the inventory and can’t be put into your ship’s storage.

It is easy, in hindsight, to say that the crafting and upgrade systems could have used a bit of expanding upon. While you can get necessary tools this way, the ease with which you get them and the lack of variety in what you need to craft really make the crafting system as a whole feel like an afterthought. A lot of what you end up upgrading feels unnecessary, such as much of the decoration. While this sort of goes with the cozy nature of the game, it makes an entire aspect of the game feel sort of like an afterthought rather than an engaging mechanic.

It is hard to describe the uniquely relaxing vibe that Duck Side of the Moon fosters. There is the feeling you get from free-floating in a space-bound asteroid, a stretch of land without even an atmosphere separating it from the infinite cosmos, as a droning, almost somber song plays in your headphones. If you want something to play to simply unwind after a long day, the game excellently delivers. Yet, the effortless, cozy, and adorable haze is occasionally broken by sudden, sobering moments of raw emotion that I did not expect to find in a game about a tiny duck astronaut. For a small indie studio, it’s easy to say that the developers of Duck Side of the Moon “cooked, making a game that is as memorable as it is relaxing and effortlessly, unapologetically silly.

If there is one thing to complain about with Duck Side of the Moon, it might be that players would find the experience to be pretty short. The game is not incredibly long, and its collection of explorable worlds is not the most ambitious in scale or depth of explorable features. The game is meant to be enjoyed, albeit not for very long. However, the time you do manage to spend with it is full of great, memorable characters, gentle, silly writing without being condescendingly cute, and mechanics that are fun and inviting in their simplicity.

There isn’t a whole lot more to say about Duck Side of the Moon. If you’re looking for an action-packed space adventure, this isn’t for you. If you’re looking for a one-hundred-hour grindfest, you should also look elsewhere. However, if what you want is a simple, pleasant title that is sweet, charming, and silly, then Duck Side of the Moon will be more than welcoming. At worst, you may find yourself wanting a little more out of the game, but I doubt that many players will have anything else to complain about with this adorable space adventure.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a Steam code for this PC review of Duck Side of the Moon. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Duck Side of the Moon is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.