Duck Season

Duck Season
Information
VR/AR	VR
Developer	Stress Level Zero
Publisher	Stress Level Zero
Platform	SteamVR, Oculus Rift (Platform)
Device	HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Valve Index
Operating System	Windows
Type	Full Game
Genre	Action, Adventure, Casual, Indie, Horror, VR, Psychological Horror
Input Device	Tracked Motion Controllers
Play Area	Seated, Standing, Room-Scale
Game Mode	Single Player
Language	English
Review	N/A
Release Date	Sep 14, 2017
Price	$19.99
App Store	Steam, Oculus Store
Website	http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=503580
Infobox Updated	11/07/2017

Duck Season is a virtual reality horror adventure game developed and published by Stress Level Zero for PC VR headsets. It was released on Steam and the Oculus Store on September 14, 2017, for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The player is a child in a living room in the summer of 1988 who spends the day playing a rented light-gun cartridge called "Duck Season", a game modeled on the 1984 light-gun game Duck Hunt. Over the course of the day and night the cartridge and its hunting dog mascot turn the story toward horror.

The game was the studio's follow-up to Hover Junkers and was directed by Alex Knoll. In VR the player aims a two-handed shotgun at ducks inside the television, explores a detailed 1980s home between hunting rounds, and can reach seven endings. A flat-screen version, Duck Season PC, followed on June 17, 2019.

Reviewed 9 October 2026. Release dates, prices, platforms, store data, patch notes, developer quotes, review scores and quoted reception checked against the Steam store and news API, the Meta blog and store page, Road to VR, UploadVR, Pocket-lint, Metacritic and OpenCritic. About review dates.

Description

Stress Level Zero's store description reads:

Summer 1988 and your mom has just rented the coolest new game for your Kingbit Entertainment System. As you play over the course of the day it becomes apparent something is different about this game than the other games you own.

Duck Season is a throwback to the golden age of 1980's gaming and movies with a hint of horror in a Spielburgian universe. Re-live a slice of childhood as you transported to an eerily familiar memory and play out the dark story that unfolds over a single day/night as your imagination takes over.

- Seven unique endings - Seven mini games to play on your Kingbit Entertainment System - Dozens of Easter eggs and hidden secrets - Realistic virtual environments - Multiple short films found on VHS tapes - Additional mysterious sub plots

Gameplay

The game takes place in a child's living room. The player picks up the "Duck Season" cartridge, inserts it into a fictional 8-bit console, which the store description calls the Kingbit Entertainment System, and is transported into a marsh beyond the screen of a CRT television. Hunting rounds work like a light-gun game played from inside the screen. The player holds a pump-action shotgun with both tracked motion controllers; Pocket-lint described aiming with "one hand on the pump, the other on the trigger", so that both hands are needed to land a shot. UploadVR noted that the player can turn around and see the television from the inside, with the child in the living room copying the player's arm movements.

Between rounds the player is free to explore the living room and the house, which are filled with interactive objects, swappable VHS tapes containing short films, and other cartridges that play 8-bit imitations of other well-known console games. Knoll told Oculus that certain minigames and tapes "only show up after specific hours or when something special has happened in-game", and that the story is set on June 20, 1988 "to coincide with some in-universe chronology". Knoll also named a dream sequence in which the player walks on the ceiling and walls as one of his favorite moments. Pocket-lint described an additional arcade mode with more ducks and less story.

The dog that accompanies the hunt, which players of the original light-gun game habitually shot, becomes the game's central antagonist. Stress Level Zero co-founder Brandon Laatsch told UploadVR that "the various endings are determined by the players actions" and that some sound effects are "driven subjectively", so focusing on them makes the player hear them as the mind might imagine them. One ending exists for players who never shoot the dog, although, according to Laatsch, "everyone shoots the dog though". The store lists seven endings, seven minigames and dozens of Easter eggs. The developer's content note says that some choices can lead to brief sequences that show blood.

Length

At the GDC 2017 demo, Laatsch told Road to VR that one playthrough ran about 90 minutes and that exploring each of the storylines could bring the total to about four hours. In its review, UploadVR wrote that a first playthrough "can be as fast as 30 minutes", while the multiple endings encourage repeated exploration. Pocket-lint estimated that a player who only shoots ducks could finish in under two hours.

Development

Duck Season was developed by Stress Level Zero, which had released Hover Junkers in 2016. Laatsch told Road to VR that development began before the Netflix series Stranger Things was released, and that the game draws on the atmosphere of the Steven Spielberg-style 1980s films of his youth. Alex Knoll directed the game. He told Oculus that the team wanted to reward players "for really studying and soaking in their environment to the point where it's truly believable as a space that exists".

In March 2017 the game was demonstrated at Valve's booth at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), where Laatsch showed it to Road to VR; a clip had surfaced without context on Laatsch's YouTube channel about two weeks earlier. Road to VR played the room-scale demo on an HTC Vive and first described it as a Vive exclusive. Stress Level Zero then corrected the report, saying it would release on Steam for all SteamVR-capable headsets, and that the studio was not a fan of exclusivity: "once you make a game you're proud of you just want everyone to be able to play it." On September 2, 2017, Road to VR reported the September 14 release date for Steam and the Oculus Store along with a gameplay trailer.

In March 2018, UploadVR's report on a tech demo of the studio's next game, Boneworks, was headlined as coming from "the makers of Duck Season".

Release

Version	Store	Release date	Hardware	Price (US)
Duck Season (VR)	Steam	September 14, 2017	SteamVR or Oculus PC headsets with tracked controllers	US$19.99
Duck Season (VR)	Oculus Store (now Meta Horizon Store, PC VR section)	September 14, 2017	Oculus Rift	US$19.99
Duck Season PC (non-VR)	Steam	June 17, 2019	Flat-screen monitor, no headset; partial controller support	US$9.99

The VR version is marked "VR Only" on Steam and supports tracked controllers. Duck Season PC is sold as a separate product; its store page describes it as the full VR game playable on a traditional monitor without a VR setup. Both versions are English only.

Updates

Date	Update	Changes
October 27, 2017	Halloween Patch	Added a Halloween Easter egg scene, reached through the Kid Wizard book after the first playthrough; added support for the Hyperkin Blaster controller and a new achievement; adjusted rendering settings to address flicker on some Oculus and AMD systems; fixed several controller bugs
June 29, 2019	Hunting Modes Update	Added hunting modes that are chosen at random during certain game hours or picked in the Practice scene; added Valve Index compatibility; lighting and other optimizations; minor bug fixes

Reception

Duck Season received few professional reviews. Metacritic lists two critic reviews for the PC version, both scored 80, which is not enough for a Metascore. OpenCritic lists two reviews, including a 7.8/10 from PC Aficionado.

Outlet	Score	Notes
UploadVR	80 (Metacritic listing)	Called the game "a love letter to an entire era of pop culture"; found the duck shooting "a little repetitive"
Pocket-lint	4/5	Reviewed on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift; listed shooting that "can get a bit samey" and is tiring on the arms as drawbacks
PC Aficionado	7.8/10	Listed on OpenCritic

UploadVR's Jamie Feltham wrote that the game is "more than a tribute to a beloved retro game", but that it "never really mixes its basic concept up enough", given how many hunting levels each playthrough includes. Pocket-lint listed the graphics, the Easter eggs, the fully interactive environment and the storyline as strengths, and called it "well worth a purchase" for players drawn to its nostalgia.

Among players, the VR version on Steam had a "Very Positive" rating as of October 2026, with 85% of 1,492 user reviews positive. On the Meta Horizon Store, the PC VR version had an average of 4.2 out of 5 from 318 ratings.

Features

• Single-player
• Steam Achievements
• Steam Trading Cards
• SteamVR Collectibles
• Tracked Controller Support
• VR Only

System Requirements

Windows

Minimum

• OS: Windows 7
• Processor: Intel i5 4590
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: GTX 970
• Storage: 7 GB available space
• VR Support: SteamVR or Oculus PC

Recommended

• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: Intel i7 6700
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: GTX 980 / GTX 1060
• Storage: 7 GB available space

See also

• Stress Level Zero
• Hover Junkers
• Boneworks
• Bonelab