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Your Hand Is A Duck (VR)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Concept - How interesting or unique the game is. | #1 | 4.611 | 4.611 |
| Overall | #3 | 4.083 | 4.083 |
| Enjoyment - How much you enjoyed playing this game. | #5 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Presentation - How well executed the game is. | #7 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
| Use of Theme - How well the game incorporated the given theme. | #10 | 3.944 | 3.944 |
Ranked from 36 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What assets did you use in this project?
Unity XR Hands package, Unity XR Interaction Toolkit package, Unity Splines package. Music: LEtoile-danse-Pt.1 by Meydän is licensed under a Attribution License. Success/failure sound effects from Universal Sound FX pack. The Bold Font by Sven Pels. Some of my old scripts for procedural idle animation. Hand Tracking Gesture Recorder by jorgejgnz. An lowpoly old blade of grass asset I made previously.
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Comments
Very unique and cool idea. The integration of hand-tracking was especially well done and the aesthetics and game blend perfectly!
The early levels felt a bit hard and I wasn't a fan of the way the player moved - perhaps a combination of the motion and getting fine-tuned movement made it difficult for me to adjust.
Overall, very well done and incredible usage of hand tracking!
This is probably the most creative use-case of hand-tracking i ever saw. I also made one, but yours definitely can't be replaced by controllers, it's perfectly designed for all the different gestures and so.
I like how you describe the game-mechanic. Even when probably nobody ever used it before, it's very easy and intuitive to understand and you get used to it pretty quickly.
I totally like the whole concept and the lots of ideas you've put it in it. Definitely a 5 stars game.
Some thoughts/problems/ideas as feedback:
Just out of curiosity: Did you somewhere get inspiration, or have you already saw similar games or so? Would really like to try more games of this kind. And of course also hope you'll continue with it :-)
Thanks for the feedback! The handtracking controls are just what seemed the most intuitive/fun to me at the time, although not necessarily reliable as I discovered too late. I haven't seen other games that use handtracking similarly. This game could have actually been done with controllers so that they track more reliably (e.g. the mouth opening/closing could have been done with the front trigger, and the head just follows the controller), but my goal for the jam was to play around with Unity's XR Hands package, and this was a simple little way to explore it. The funny thing is that I didn't start making the levels until the final 3 hours and was afraid that they would be too easy. :)
When I saw the title of your game, I knew this was a must play. As a person who enjoys the combination of hands and animals, this game speaks to me.
The use of hand tracking was terrific. I did struggle a bit with the movement using the right hand, but I also don't know of a better solution. The overall look of the project is top notch. The duckling grab mechanic can be a bit wonky, but the fact that you got it to work more consistently than not during a game jam is great!
I'm jealous and I think you have a top contender here. Cheers!!!
A really nice concept, with a bit of polish this could be an amazing game.
Really solid jam entry! I could definitely see this getting refined and turned into a full fledged game. Graphically, it really feels like something that would end up on the Switch, if the Switch ever really went into the VR space.
Amazing job!
Really quality stuff right here! I really would love to play this and rate it but sadly I only have PCVR. When the quest 3 comes out I will come back to this to try it!
Wow, just wow. Not gonna do the compliments as others have already done that.
Here's some feedbacks and suggestions:
1. Using 3 quacks to toggle the follow mode is funny and seems smart at the first place, but it keeps being falsely registered when I'm quickly grabbing and releasing the ducklings to move them to the other sides. Perhaps use another hand gesture for that?
2. The grab physics is not reliable, things (including ducklings and balls and boxes) keep falling out of the grab. Not sure if it's intentional, as it would make sense that the grabbing power of the duck's beak is unreliable.
3. Smooth locomotion made me a bit sick. But I guess there's no way to implement teleportation due to the fundamental game design of this.
Anyway, great job! Enjoyed it a lot.
Also, I don't see a reason to not include controllers as an option. Using hand tracking is certainly fun, but for those who prefer better tracking quality, controllers are still better. I'm aware that you finished this game in 3 days, so implementing two types of input might be taking too much time.
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, it would have definitely tracked more reliably using a controller, and you wouldn't have needed to remember the hand gestures. But for this jam, my personal goal was to play around with the new XR Hands Unity package. For a post-jam version, I'd definitely add controllers, or do more where hand tracking adds more gameplay value.
For the jam, I was originally thinking of having the player swing their index finger and pinky finger to make the duck waddle. But I found that detailed hand tracking on the Quest 2 is so unreliable currently, especially when one finger obscures the other, or when the hand isn't at optimal angles, or when lighting is not good even. I wonder how good the hand tracking will be with Apple Vision Pro or Quest 3.
Amazing work! And most of all amazing Idea!! I really respect people that want to use the hand tracking nowaday (i work with hand tracking) and i know is not easy to deal with it, so i'm impressed that with few time you could bring an amazing game like this!
I think we know who is winning here lol. From reading your page description I am shocked that you did this in such a short time with such good execution. Brilliant concept, well presented, and even included a tutorial that was pretty nice to see! Although it lacks a tutorial for the stop and follow mechanic so I wasn't aware of how to use it while playing and accidentally triggered it on the second level causing them to stop and I did not know how to get them to follow again.
The graphics work really well despite the simplistic style although you could see on the second level the environment design start to fall apart a little in polish compared to the first and the intro scene indicating it was added last minute. But the mechanics and puzzles are nicely designed.
A few issues I encountered were that sometimes the ducklings get stuck on something or each other and fail to climb over a small ledge unless another one pushes it so I had to go back a few times to pick them up. But it does make sense in a way and adds some personality to them as it is like them stumbling a bit and needing some extra help.
Also sometimes the path finding of the swan body would also get stuck and the neck would just be stretched really far until I go back and retrieve the body.
I really think you should pursue this game further and give it a full release. It has potential.
Thank you for playing and for the thoughtful feedback! The funny thing is that it's actually a really simple game, the mechanics implementation is ended up being simple (hand tracking, gesture recognition, and following), and ducks are one of the easiest animals to 3D model, and I use flat unlit shaders for most of it. I didn't get to start making the levels until the final 3 hours. Somehow, my non-gamer wife picked up all of the controls so easily, so I decided to make two quick levels and a tutorial text wall repeated twice instead of a nice tutorial and no levels. I should have put the tutorial text on the palm of the right hand for easy reference at any time.
The interesting thing about the ducklings controllers is that they have a "heartbeat" every 0.5 - 2.0 seconds that gives them a random walking speed in a certain range, and a random wander direction within an 15-30 degree arc towards the player (when following). So if you wait around, the stragglers should be able get over the small ledges that other ducklings that were at the same position previously were able to get over. It's that uncertain wait that can really quack up a duck parent's heart though, especially with moving obstacles around! For post-jam, I'll probably make those ducklings do a little hop on their heartbeat so that they can get over tiny obstacles and cracks a little more easily.
That is so freaking cute - love it!
And I said that on another Jam entry as well, it's great to see hand tracking used as a controller.
Well that was super cute and with a few tweaks you could be looking at a fun title.
The stop and start mechanic was trigger a few times by accident especially when trying to move the ducklings onto a platform quickly and a few little physics issues. Other than that solid jam.
Really fantastic work, really simple but effective concept well executed, and props for using hand tracking too! I did accidently bump into my ducklings a lot pushing them around but otherwise great stuff
This is extremely well done, and very creative. You've done an enormous amount of work here (from IK to AI) and it really shows. I love the overall idea of using hand tracking to move the ducklings to safety.
If I had to give a critique, it would be with the AI for the ducklings. I often wanted to box them in while I prepared a way for them to overcome some obstacle. They seemed able to squirm out of any place I chose to store them. I imagine you did this on purpose, so that they don't get stuck on random obstacles. Perhaps there could be a way for the momma duck to distract the ducklings and keep them in one place for a while. At first, I thought this was what the balls were for.
Anyway, fantastic work. You could totally make this into a full featured game.
Thank you! The duck can command the ducklings to stop/start following by quacking 3 times very rapidly - it will then show a speech bubble with a stop sign or a gather sign - but that controls all the ducks at the same time. If you want to control just a portion of the ducklings, then you have to block them in behind a wall by placing boards/cubes as a barrier.
Ahh. Thank you! I noticed the signs, but didn't put that together. I'll give it another go. Again, well done!
Wow, great concept and implementation, impressive! Didn't get to the end though because it's very hard and repetitive to move a lot of ducklings, they tend to fall out of my hand.
Ah you went for the brute force approach. That's definitely very tedious. The dozen ducklings is there to force you to come up with more elegant solutions. I was going to add a timer and leaderboard but ran out of time for the jam.
Hint: Keep in mind that the duck can grab boards, balls, and boxes and place them, move them, or carry them to make things simpler and allow for a lot of different creative solutions. You can even try placing a board, walking onto the board, and carrying the board. Or use your beak to push your body even. Use the wacky physics to your advantage. See the tips on the game description page for more ideas.
Yep, I used planks as bridges and slopes and it worked but not everywhere. And where it didn't work it was quite frustrating to bring all the ducklings by hand. And sometimes just accidentally to make them go in a chasm. Just don't get me wrong on that, I still believe your submission is the best of what I played on the jam so far.
My wife and I really liked this one. The concept was fun, using the hand gestures in this was was a blast.
This is up there for anything I've played so far. Really unique concept and what's here is already really well made. It was good enough to let my 4 year old give it a quick spin and she was losing her mind that her hand is a duck at the start menu. Well done!
AMAZING IDEA! I love how your hand is a duck, this is what Jaron Lanier was talking about in his book about his VR research in the 80s/90s! Finally someone has the guts to try something unique to VR. And great use of hand tracking. The cute ducklings and the music and the visuals are all top notch as well, and really cute!
But... (sorry if this sounds harsh, after 30 minutes of playing and not finishing the first level I'm a bit frustrated haha). The instructions are written twice (I understand why) and this confused me that i had to read a lot, and it was just the same. Also just trying to understand the controls took about 10 minutes and help from 3 friends also playing the game - we were all struggling to figure this out. Nobody managed to get across the bridge because it's just so hard (frustrating). And there are way too many ducklings! After 20 minutes I finally understood how to move the duck for the first level - the sign was blocking them and i had to use the platform to get over the sign - of course some ducklings got stuck inside the game, so I picked them up and put them on the other side. Then the holes.. wow talk about a tough start getting even tougher haha! 3 tries to get the ducklings over but they kept falling in the hole. My 3rd attempt I gave up because I finally got them all to the other side but while trying to move the duck accidentally made them all follow me so they all went crashing into the hole :( Poor little ducklings, I feel guilty.
Hahaha! Thanks. It's a game jam and I started making the levels in the final 3 hours of the jam and was worried that they would be too easy. On the description page, I've added some hints on a bunch of ways to get across those challenges.
Ah yeah I didn't read the description, too many games to test, ain't got no time to read descriptions :P
Great concept and a beautiful presentation. Very hard though. Even the menu was difficult.
Cutest game i’ve ever played in VR! Would definetly play it again!
Pros
Great audio
Great interaction
Great gameplay
Cons
Gameplay is quite hard from the start
Ideas
Number of ducks could be less at the start
Introduce all the mechanics step by step instead of all at once
Thanks! Good suggestions.