Ducklings

Ducklings is a heart wrenching cooperative card game about ducks working together to protect their children, which often requires making hard choices and sacrifices.

Ducklings started as a class project, which Aimee, Timothi, and James brought into the Finishing and Polishing class that I co-taught in 2017. The class is designed to teach students about usability and quality assurance testing, market research, adding polish, subtractive design, and release strategies, using a completed game from another class as an example to practice these skills on. The Ducklings team brought a tremendous energy and ambition to the class, and sought out real-world opportunities to apply the lessons that they learned, such as pitching the game to different audiences, soliciting media coverage, promoting the game and building an audience, and refining the game experience through playtests and iteration. To this day, I use the Ducklings team as an example to my students of how those lessons can be deployed effectively.

Ducklings was an Official Selection at the 2017 IndieCade Festival, and the crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter was featured as one of the Kickstarter Projects We Love. The campaign was successful, raising $28,157 from 696 backers, and the game shipped in 2018.

Website: https://www.facebook.com/deckheadgames 
Kickstarter Page: http://kck.st/2s1EzRW 

Press: Tabletop Gaming: http://bit.ly/tabletopgaming-ducklings 
Press: Top Shelf Gaming: http://bit.ly/topshelf-ducklings