Draft:Duck Season (video game)

• Comment: UploadVR does seem notable, but overall there are too few WP:RS to pass WP:GNG. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 08:12, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

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Duck Season
Developer(s)	Stress Level Zero
Publisher(s)	Stress Level Zero
Director(s)	Alex Knoll Brandon Laatsch
Artist(s)	Kevin Comerford Tiffany Chu Nate Ebbing Nate Sawyer Spencer Anderson
Writer(s)	Brandon Laatsch
Composer(s)	Michael Wyckoff
Series	Stress Level Zero
Engine	Unity
Platform(s)	Windows Oculus Rift
Release	Windows, Oculus Rift September 14th, 2017 (original) June 17th, 2019 (PC)
Genre(s)	Survival horror
Mode(s)	Single-player

Duck Season is a 2017 virtual reality survival horror game developed and published by Stress Level Zero. Players control David, a young boy that has been given the titular Duck Season game. Between playing like a typical first-person shooter, things get increasingly weirder as hours pass depending on the player's choices.

Duck Season is heavily inspired by Duck Hunt, with the gameplay remaining similar, while reimagining it as a horror experience. In the game, players must pass each shooting level in order to progress the time, in which the plot will progress.

Duck Season was overall met with generally positive reviews from critics, with its scares and surrealism praised, but criticized for the repetitiveness of the shooting game. A non-VR version of the game, Duck Season PC, was released in 2019, which received generally positive reviews for its porting, but some criticism for still feeling like a VR game.

Gameplay

Duck Season's shooting minigame is played identically to Duck Hunt. Throughout every round, there are a total of ten ducks which the player is tasked to shoot, with a minimum amount required in order to pass. As the levels go by, the minimum number get higher and the ducks, either one or two each, get faster. Failure to shoot the minimum amount of ducks results in a fail.

Depending on the difficulty, there can be either one or three rounds each level and the player having to manually reload their shotgun every five shots, whereas in the game's easy difficulty, the shotgun never loses ammo. Once the level is passed, the player is able to progress an hour, hence progressing through the plot.

In the real world accessed in between levels, the player has various objects to interact with, including 8-bit minigames, VHS tapes, or magazines and secrets that reveal the game's hidden lore.

Plot

This game takes place in Stress Level Zero's shared universe, connecting with Boneworks and Bonelab.

On June 20th, 1988, a young boy named David is given a one-day rental of the titular Duck Season by his mother. Throughout the day, he begins to experience strange things happening within in the game and the world around him.

There are a total of seven endings, three of them only available after getting one of the main four endings. By shooting the game's hunting dog mascot during the shooting sections, the supernatural effects lead in to the hunting dog leaving the game, stealing the family's kitchen knife and brutally slaughtering David's mother, before prompting David to face it in a boss battle. David either loses and gets trapped in the game by the hunting dog, murdered by the hunting dog in the real world, or ends up killing the hunting dog and running away after he realizes he'll be blamed for his mother's murder. Alternatively, opting to not shoot the hunting dog causes a much more favorable ending to occur. While still leaving the game throughout the playthrough, the hunting dog does not get angry at David and the latter is sent to bed, before sneaking back downstairs and playing Final Fiesta II.

Two endings are unlockable in the second playthrough. One of the endings involves David calling the police once the hunting dog escapes the game, causing the police to chase it from a helicopter and forcefully shoot it down. A premature ending involves David shooting the sun with a golden shell that rarely appears in the shotgun, which traps both David and the hunting dog in a white space known as the Voidway.

Once all six endings are unlocked and a playthrough without shooting the hunting dog is played, an alternative ending plays in which David is summoned into the stage setting of Duck Season, and David ends up realizing the hunting dog, now propped with cameras and all the props, was behind everything. Despite the hunting dog being mute, David somehow understands and agrees to help it in rolling the credits of the game.

Development and Release

Not much is known about Duck Season's inner development, a teaser was abruptly dropped in February 2017 misleadingly called "Dog Shot in the Backyard", which showcased one of Duck Season's endings being run in-game out of context. A month later, a teaser trailer was released for the game.

Duck Season was shown and playable in demo form at Game Developers Conference in early 2017. The GDC demo was well-received. The full game released on September 14th, 2017, while a non-VR version, Duck Season PC, released on June 17th, 2019.

Reception

Duck Season was well-received by most reviewers. Jamie Feltham of UploadVR praised Duck Season for its accurate recreation of Duck Hunt's gameplay, calling it "a love letter to an entire era of pop culture and childhoods well-spent on a healthy dose of screen watching", as well as the game's eventual scares, but criticized that it eventually became repetitive, stating that it "never really mixes its basic concept up enough". James McKeever of Popzara Press was similar in his criticisms, concluding that the Duck Hunt-inspired levels were "very rudimentary and feels a little too straight compared to the rest of the package". Duck Season was compared to Stranger Things by Road to VR and other reviewers for its 1980s timeframe and references, as well as its "otherworldly interludes".