If you’d told me that one of the gems of my Gamescom experience would be a parody extraction shooter themed around birds, I’d probably have believed you, because I gel with games like Escape from Duckov. This title wins points for the name alone, but there’s a surprising amount of meat on this bird, even if it has a few glaring and somewhat fowl flaws.
I promise I’ll stop the bird-related puns now.
Join me and we’ll take flight (sorry) with a full Escape from Duckov preview, pecking away (sorry) at the layers of this developing game that might just hatch (sorry) into something beautiful.
Extreme Bird Bashing Action
Following my week at Gamescom, I sat down with a demo of Escape from Duckov and took a deep dive into everything this satirical extraction shooter has to offer. What I wasn’t expecting was a thoroughly enjoyable game that’s a little rough around the edges but stacked with hilarious potential.
In Escape from Duckov, you control a bird. When you start playing the game, you’re able to customise your bird, opting to pick a pre-designed all-yellow chick or create something utterly bizarre. The sliders give you full freedom to flex your imagination, and the resulting build can see you becoming a walking beak.
I mean…
When you’re ready to go, you’re plunged into the world of Escape from Duckov, which is, of course, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Escape from Tarkov, the spearhead extraction shooter that recently received a full release date after eight years in beta.
In Escape from Duckov, you follow a simple gameplay loop:
- Enter the world
- Loot, shoot, and survive
- Extract again
- Rinse and repeat
As you explore the small, cartoony, and charming maps, you’ll find a vast variety of items that you can use to build stations and creature comforts in your hideout, sell to traders, or use to complete quests. There are stacks of side missions to complete, which are represented by a relatively diverse selection of objectives.
I was genuinely surprised by how violent Escape from Duckov is. Taking a bat or a gun and attacking enemies (dogs and other birds) results in an explosion of blood and gore, which dissipates to reveal something that resembles a cooked chicken on a plate, which is the ‘loot box’ of defeated enemies.
If you die at any point, the typical extraction shooter formula kicks in and you’re booted back to your hideout, which in this case is a bunker. You’ll have lost everything you took with you and picked up, but you’ve got a chance to run back to where you died and collect your dropped gear.
Similarities Run Deep
Escape from Duckov is a carbon copy of Escape from Tarkov in many ways. First, there’s the name – that’s pretty obvious. As I played, I noticed themes, iconography, mechanics, and even map names that mimicked Escape from Tarkov.
The opening map is named Ground Zero, which is one of the ‘starter maps’ in Escape from Tarkov. Many of the weapons, such as the PM Pistol, AKS74, and TOZ shotgun, are mainstays in Escape from Tarkov, and Duckov players escape their raid by finding a green flare and standing in a zone for a few seconds, which is identical to most Tarkov extractions.
Even the trader, stash, and mission systems are reminiscent of Escape from Tarkov.
Because of all this, it’s impossible to take Escape from Duckov seriously, no matter how entertaining the gameplay loop is or how genuinely satisfying the combat is.
There are differences, of course.
Escape from Duckov utilizes a ‘top-down’ kind of perspective, while Tarkov is a first-person shooter. Duckov also has a ‘fog of war’ mechanic on higher difficulty levels, which means you can only see in the direction your character is facing. On that note, it’s important to stress that Duckov has several difficulty tiers to suit the individual playing the game.
Also, Escape from Duckov is (for now) entirely single-player.
Imperfection
Escape from Duckov shines in some areas, such as the charming visual palette, the combat mechanics, and the customization elements, plus you get to run around with a puppy dog companion, which is fantastic. The hideout building system shows great promise, and there are plenty of tasks to complete, even at a demo level.
I also know that expansions, including new maps, are already planned.
However, the demo was riddled with issues related to the UI, menus, and accessibility elements like subtitles. Many tasks and conversations had their subtitles replaced with placeholder text, which is pretty tough considering the game isn’t voiced. The difficulty balancing is also a little skewed at times.
There are a few elements in Escape from Duckov that don’t make much sense. For instance, you can find teleportation points around the map that shoot you across the way to another site for no real reason. I’m sure there’s something in there to explain why these exist, but I’ve not noticed anything yet.
I can’t see anyone sinking more than a few hours into Escape from Duckov, but it would do much better if it had PvP features woven into it. Perhaps that’s a deliverable further down the line after basic considerations like subtitles and a clean UI.
Let me know what you think about Escape from Duckov on the Insider Gaming forum.
