The 5th highest-rated game on Steam in 2022 is back with a multiplayer sequel

The ducks are back, and they've brought friends.

When you think of the best games of 2022, what springs to mind? Elden Ring. Vampire Survivors. Persona 5 Royal. Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Teardown, Card Shark, Monster Hunter Rise, the list goes on.

But the list is wrong. You’re wrong. Our Game of the Year Awards were wrong. All wrong.

It’s Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, which was the one of the five best-reviewed games on Steam in 2022, which still has a 95.36% rating, and which was a game about plastic ducks floating around while you watch.

And yeah, all you did in Placid Plastic Duck Simulator is watch. Back in 2022, that was plenty. But times change, and so do games about ducks.

That’s why Placid Plastic Duck Simulator has a sequel called Slowly Sliding Ducks, and not only are those beautifully rendered ducks back but they’re brought online PvP with them. Take a quack at the trailer:

As you can see, this ain’t your grandma’s game about ducks! (Your grandma’s game about ducks was probably Duck Hunt for the NES.)

There are bombs. There is ice. There is football (or soccer, if you prefer). There are slides. There are puffer fish. It’s basically Fall Guys, but with 8 to 16 ducks at a time.

There are also hats and other cosmetics, and if you’re worried about the slippery slope of microtransactions bringing imbalance to the world of competitive duck battles, worry no more:

“Slowly Sliding Ducks contains in-game items that can be purchased with real money. About this, we want to make things clear,” developer Turbolento Games says. “All cosmetics can be unlocked through gameplay. No item is exclusively obtainable through monetary purchase.”

The little duck hats and necklaces and accessories also do not provide any gameplay advantages. They are purely cosmetic.

No release date has been announced yet, but if we’re ducky it won’t be too long to wait.