“Abducktion” (2023) was designed by Evan Katz and Josh Roberts with art by Alina Lytvynova, self-published by Evan and Josh’s Very Special Games Company. It’s a logic puzzle game about trying to make patterns out of differently colored plastic ducks using alien abduction, where you play as the intern of someone who believes experience makes up for a lack of payment.
The game mechanics are relatively simple. Each player has a board with 10 spots for ducks that follow a specific track split between two rows. You randomly pull 10 ducks from the rubber UFO and place them along the track. You’re then dealt a certain number of “action cards” that can let you move your ducks around. These include things like “Swap,” which lets you swap two adjacent ducks; “Body Snatchers,” which lets you remove three adjacent ducks are replace them with random ones from the UFO; or “Abducktion,” which lets you remove one duck, shift all other ducks “downstream” (along the track) to fill the hole, and then put a random new duck from the UFO at the start of the track.
As you move your ducks, the goal is to make certain formation cards, out of a combination of location on the track and color (pink, yellow, blue, or white). “Paddling” requires four differently colored ducks in a straight line. “Corkscrew” requires six ducks – three on the top row in color pattern A-B-A, and three on the bottom directly below those in the color pattern B-A-B. “Full House” requires three consecutive ducks of one color next to two consecutive ducks in a second, all in the same row. You get the idea. Each combination has a different complexity that makes it worth a certain number of points to complete – Paddling is worth only one point, while Full House is worth five, and Corkscrew is worth seven. Three formation cards are in play at any given time.
Each turn, you play a formation card and resolve your board (and potentially other players’ boards) appropriately. If your board matches a formation card (or potentially multiple), you can claim it. Replace it with a new one and remove the ducks in those formations, sliding the rest downstream to fill the gaps and pulling new ducks from the UFO. Otherwise, play rotates to the next person. Officially, you only draw new action cards when someone completes a formation. However, I know that some groups have you draw a new one after each turn, rather than two whenever a formation gets completed. Personally, I think the official rules create a needed challenge for a single-player game, as it makes the action cards a limited resource. In my opinion though, both work for multi-player. It doesn’t substantially change the gameplay and I’d do what works best for your group.
This is where we need to start differentiating between the single- and multi-player versions of “Abducktion”. Nominally, it can have up to four players (though as I’ll touch on more in a moment, I’m not sure that’s the best way to play this game). If you are playing solo, your goal is to complete all formation cards. If you are playing as a group, your goal is to get the most points from formation cards. Note that you don’t necessarily need the most formation cards – if you can get a couple high-point cards, that might be a better use of resources than going for lower-value ones.
Up until this point, “Abducktion” is a silly, fun game with enough strategy to get you thinking a bit without being overly complex. However, I’m not certain that being player count flexible creates a better game.
Whenever I’ve played “Abducktion” in a group, there’s something that (for lack of a better phrase) just feels off about it. It seems to take its notes from solo strategy games such as a lot of ThinkFun games, and those aren’t made to work in group. This game just doesn’t feel like it’s the type of game that requires group play.
On the flip side, if you were to commit to it as a solo game, you need more complexity and more stakes. ThinkFun works well because the challenges get progressively more difficult. There’s no similar stratification here. I’ve never lost a solo game “Abducktion”, because there’s no progressive difficulty and unless you’re unlucky with formation card pulls it’s not to difficult. Additionally, there are cards that are made exclusively for group play. “Wormhole” lets you swap a duck on your board for a duck on any other player’s board, but in a solo game, functions as basically just another Abducktion card.
This is what makes “Abducktion” quite awkward for me as a player. It doesn’t deliver on a solo strategy game experience as well as others in that genre do, but it also doesn’t commit enough to being multi-player to shake the feeling that it’s not meant for multiple people.
This has been an increasing pattern I’ve seen in the gaming industry, particularly those that (like “Abducktion”) were produced as part of a crowdfunding campaign, rather than a more traditional publishing company. An increasing number of games are advertising themselves as having “single- and multi-player modes,” with many even listing it as a stretch goal (a recent tabletop role-playing game I backed did just that, with the solo ruleset being the highest-tier stretch goal). I don’t necessarily think the COVID-19 pandemic caused this – as our lives are increasingly online, the ability to play alone, with a group of friends, or in some type of hybrid mode where you’re playing as a group but physically separate is becoming more and more desirable. COVID-19 definitely helped though, and I do think brought it to a full-force phenomenon more quickly. It also makes taking a gamble on a new game more worthwhile, especially for something like crowdfunding – even if your friends don’t like it, you can still play it. No need to worry how you’d return it. I understand why this happens.
And I’m not opposed to games with flexible numbers of players, either. Last week, I wrote quite positively about “Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle,” which can be played with one to four players. “Blood on the Clocktower,” another game I’ve reviewed for TechNews, also has distinct game modes as the number of players changes (albeit no single-player mode) but also makes sure those are all enjoyable gameplay experiences. It can and has been done well before and can and will be done well again. I’m just not sure that it succeeds for “Abducktion” in particular. As a whole, I also don’t think this trend has benefitted the gaming industry. Again, it is absolutely possible to vary game mode dependent on number of players and have the result still be a fun and enjoyable game regardless. But most games I’ve seen try to walk this line end up in the same no man’s land as “Abducktion:” they don’t commit quite hard enough to either, so fall somewhat flat at both.
Normally I ask, “Who would I recommend this game for?” to close out a review, but this time, I’m going to just ask myself “Would I recommend this game?” And overall, I’d just give it a “meh”. It’s a nice premise. The art is adorable. The gameplay is a bit awkward, but I still enjoyed it for the most part. It’s not overly complex but still manages to be strategic. It works for a wide variety of ages. It has a lot going for it in all honesty. But it didn’t wow me. It just felt kind of awkward throughout. I can’t look back at it and say, “this is a game for this audience, and they are likely to enjoy it.” If it sounds interesting, try and borrow a copy before buying, I guess? It’s not a bad game, it’s just not amazing.