Abducktion: A Weirdly Strategic Game of Duck Kidnapping

The content is, but the activity might not be — Abducktion can challenging! There’s probably not an upper limit on age (we designed it to be fun for adults even if tiny ears and eyes are around) but anyone under 10-12 might struggle with the logic puzzle aspect of the game.

We think anyone can be good at Abducktion, but you’ll be a pro if you’re good at spatial reasoning and moving shapes around in your head. Tetris and Candy Crush players, you’ve got a head start!

Probably not everyone! A good amount of the purple and pink cards are risque or mature, and often the way two ideas are connected  can be...surprising. The last part depends on how clean or dirty the players are. But, while the game's rated 17+, we've taken care to make sure the content isn't thoughtlessly offensive (it punches up, not down!)

The base game is for 1-4 players (yep, it comes with solitaire rules so you can play as a logic puzzle on your own!) and you can make it up to 6 players with the expansion pack.

Not yet. We’re a two-person company and international shipping has proven difficult for us in the past. We’re working on partnerships that allow us to better fulfill international orders and hope to be doing that soon.

It’s a flexible, durable material called TPR that’s perfect for making a ship that would hold its shape, dispense ducks easily, and be super fun to touch. We weren’t initially familiar with the material and made fools of ourselves during conversations with our manufacturing partners more than once.

They’re non-toxic acrylic. Still, don’t put them in your mouth.

80! We wanted there to be enough ducks to ensure statistically random probability.

Flaps on the top of the ship are flexible and allow players to easily reach in to remove single ducks, or put a handful of ducks back in the cargo hold. There’s enough empty space on the inside that you can shake up the ducks real good to make sure you’re pulling them out randomly (also function as an excellent maraca.) 

Short answer: exhaustive playtesting. Longer answer: we imagined all the different formations that could be realistically created by 10 ducks spread evenly across two rows and played each of them to see if they were doable, fun, and appropriately challenging. The process for the Action Cards was similar, but it was more about what players wanted to be able to do to move ducks around their board and then making sure the Action Cards weren’t too powerful. In general, if it wasn’t fun or fair, we scrapped it.

Grab them out of the spaceship, of course! Once you’ve captured a Formation Cards, the ducks remaining on your board all move downstream immediately, leaving no empty spaces between them. Then, players will take ducks from the ship, one at a time, and refill the empty ponds.

Playtesters were finishing their turns in 30 to 90 seconds. Plus, we’ve designed the game so the majority of the “duck refilling” activity happens after you’ve already passed your turn to the next player, which really keeps things moving.

At the beginning of each game, you’ll randomly count out a stack of 15 formation cards that you’ll all compete for (the game comes with more, so you won’t see every formation every game). Once all the Formation Cards have been captured, the game ends, and whoever has the most points wins!

Like Puns of Anarchy, Charty Party, and Ransom Notes, we have a Kickstarter fulfillment partner in place. Once (and if) we reach our goal, we’ll place an initial order with our manufacturing partner — who already has the game artwork ready to print. We expect our Kickstarter backers to be committing Abducktions by January at the latest. If you backed Open Relationships, see our most recent update and know fulfillment for it will start in a matter of weeks.

Our first priority will be to fulfill our Kickstarter orders. After that, we hope to turn Abducktion  into a real business and will spend Kickstarter earnings on game inventory and marketing.