Our game · Coming to the App Store
There’s a duck around the corner.
Ducks appear on a live map of wherever you are and refresh every fifteen minutes. Walk to one, meet it through your camera, flick some bread, and it joins your Pond Book. Real parks, ponds and canals hand out bread and eggs, and eggs hatch as you walk. Free, no adverts, and nothing leaves your phone.
- 16
- species, from the Mallard to a Golden Duck hardly anyone has met
- 15 min
- between spawns, so the walk to the shops is never the same twice
- 0
- adverts, servers or accounts. Everything happens on your phone
Pokémon GO, if it were a Sunday walk.
We wanted the feeling of finding something on a real map without the pace. Ducks are everywhere, they are near water, and nobody has ever been stressed by one. Please look up from the map when you cross a road. The ducks will wait.
Real map, real ducks
Ducks spawn around you from the map grid and the time of day, more near water. Two people on the same bench see the same Mandarin, with no server involved.
Meet them in AR
Tap a duck within reach and it stands on the actual path through your camera. Flick bread for most, seed cake for the fussy. Some fly off. That is ducks.
Real ponds hand out eggs
Parks, lakes, canals and fountains near you become places to feed the ducks. Eggs hatch as you walk: two kilometres for a common duck, ten for something rare.
A year at the pond
Winter migrants from October, ducklings in spring, eclipse plumage in summer, rain that fills the water with ducks. Friendship tiers, field notes and a Pond Book to fill.
How it is built
Our biggest game and our first that gets you out of the house, built entirely on the phone: no server, no account, no adverts, and location that never leaves the device.
Back to all work- Native Swift, built with SwiftUI, MapKit and ARKit
- Apple Watch companion so walks count from your wrist
- Deterministic spawns keyed to place and time, so there is no server to run
- Health app integration to credit walks recorded while the app is closed
- StoreKit 2 for Ducats and the Duckabout Pass
- Location and camera used on the device only. Nothing is uploaded
No adverts. Ever.
Duckabout is free and we would like to keep it free of adverts, because an interstitial in the middle of a walk would poison the whole thing. Ducats and the Pass cover the costs. If you enjoy the game and want to chip in without buying anything in it, you can buy us a coffee, and the ducks their food.
Questions people ask
- What is Duckabout?
- A location game for iPhone with the tone of a Sunday walk. Ducks appear on a real map around you. Walk to one, meet it in AR through your camera, flick bread, and it joins your Pond Book. Real parks and ponds hand out bread and eggs, and eggs hatch as you walk.
- Does Duckabout have adverts?
- No. It is free to play with Ducats, the in-game coins, which you earn from daily quests or top up from £0.99. The optional Duckabout Pass is £4.99 a month for a daily gift, faster hatching, double reach and 500 Ducats.
- Does Duckabout track my location?
- It uses your location while the app is open to show ducks and ponds near you and to measure how far you walk. Nothing is sent to us. There is no server and no account, so your walks stay on your phone.
- Do I have to use the camera?
- No. AR is optional. If you decline the camera, or your device does not support ARKit, ducks appear in a drawn park scene instead.
- When is it out?
- Duckabout is finished and heading to the App Store. Email [email protected] if you want to hear when it lands.