How to play Duck

Three balance games for one thumb. Every one of them is endless: it keeps getting faster and harder until the duck goes in.

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Duck is a small arcade game about keeping a rubber duck out of trouble. You pick one of three modes, and a run lasts until the duck falls in. There is no level to finish and no timer to beat: the score is how long you lasted, and the game never stops raising the stakes. Most first runs end in under half a minute. Good runs last minutes. The best players on the leaderboard have learned to stay calm while everything speeds up around them.

Drift: keep the raft level

A duck stands on a small raft on a rough sea. The raft pivots around its middle, and the duck's own weight is the biggest force on it: step off centre and the raft tips, and a tipped raft makes the duck slide further the same way.

Controls

Hold the left half of the screen to walk left, the right half to walk right. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys or A and D.
The duck speeds up and slows down gradually, so it never stops exactly where you let go.

What happens

Every few seconds something lands on the raft and stays: a pebble, a cup, a duckling. Each one moves the balance point, so the spot you just learned is wrong again.
The waves grow for as long as you last, and after the first minute a gust starts pushing the raft from one side and then the other, a little harder every second. You will see it as streaks of wind in the sky.
The run ends if the raft tips too far or the duck slides off the end.

Tips

Stand on the high side, not in the middle. The middle is only level on an empty raft.
Make small corrections early. Past a certain angle the slope pulls harder than the duck can walk, and the raft is lost.
Score: one point for every sixtieth of a second, plus 250 for every load you carried.

Flow: ride the current

A duck floats down a river. Somewhere in it runs a band of good current, drawn in teal, and the only thing that matters is staying inside it. It winds, it narrows into tight passages and opens into wide pools, and it speeds up for as long as the run lasts.

Controls

Hold anywhere to paddle up, let go to sink. On a keyboard, hold Space, W or the up arrow.
The duck has weight, so it always reacts a moment late. Start moving before the bend, not in it.

What happens

Inside the current your multiplier climbs, up to ×25, and your stamina refills. Outside it the multiplier resets and stamina drains, faster the further out you are. The run ends when stamina runs out.
Every run is one of three rivers, chosen at random: Meander with long, broad bends, Rapids with quick wiggles, and Gorge with long narrow passages between wide pools.
The narrowest passage is always a little wider than the duck. It is never impossible, only fast.

Tips

Look ahead to the next narrows. In a pool you have room, so use it to line up for what comes next.
Short, light taps hold a line better than long presses.
The multiplier is the score. One long clean stretch is worth more than many short ones.

Tower: stack it high

A duck carries a tower of crates on its head. New crates swing down from above, one at a time, and you move the duck to catch each one on top of the stack.

Controls

Hold the left or right half of the screen to move the duck. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys or A and D.

What happens

Catch a crate off centre and the tower starts to lean, and the lean grows on its own, faster the taller the tower is.
A perfect, dead-centre catch pulls the lean back, so precision lets you recover from a mistake.
The crates fall faster and swing wider as the tower grows. Miss one, or let the tower lean too far, and the run ends.

Tips

Watch where the crate will be when it reaches the top of the tower, not where it is now.
After a bad catch, go for a perfect one next rather than a safe one.

Leaderboards you can trust

Duck records every tap of a ranked run. When the run ends, our server replays those inputs through the same physics the game uses and only accepts the score if it comes out identical. A score that was edited, or played on a modified game, does not reproduce and never reaches the board. Each mode has a global board, a board for your country and one for your friends.

Playing for free

You can try three runs as a guest, with nothing to sign up for. With a free account, your runs rank and your best scores are kept. Runs use lives, which come back on their own over time. In the phone apps you can also watch a short ad for another one, or support the game with unlimited play.

Friends, duels and messages

Add friends with their friend code, see their scores on a board of your own, challenge them to a duel on the same river or the same sea, and send messages from any main screen.

Where to play

Duck runs in any modern browser at duckgame.live, and as an app on iPhone and Android. Your account is the same everywhere, so your scores, friends and messages follow you.