Your Hand Is A Duck (VR)
A downloadable game for Android
In this wacky physics VR game, your hand is a duck. Your duty as a full-time stay-at-home duck parent is to deliver your dozen ducklings to their scheduled destinations. Stretch, toss, push, and build your path through zany challenges using your elastic neck. Just make sure no one dies. Includes 2 levels and a title screen sandbox.
Game for Meta Quest 2 / Quest Pro. Hand/finger tracking required!
For better hand tracking, make sure the area is well lit, and that you have some space to move around and swing your arms. Keep in mind that when one hand crosses over the other, the hand that is obscured may lose tracking or not track very well.
Controls (these are in game as well)
Left hand controls the duck. Right hand controls your player locomotion.
| Action | Control |
| Move duck head | Move left hand - the duck head is glued to your left hand. The duck body will follow if it is far enough and can walk towards the head. |
| Open/close mouth. Quack | Pinch/open left middle finger and thumb |
| Pick up a duckling or object | Pinch with left middle finger and thumb as if you are grabbing it with the beak |
| Jump | Move the left hand up high to jump (every 2 seconds). Make sure it says in your field of view so it is tracked. |
| Toggle whether ducklings follow | Quack 3x very rapidly and you'll see a speech bubble for what the new mode is. |
| Move world (Locomotion) | Make a fist with the right hand and pull yourself in that direction (including up/down) |
| Smooth move in a direction (Locomotion) | Point with your right index finger with the thumb flat against the top of the index finger to move in the direction you are pointing. |
Hints:
- On the Duckdash level, you can grab a box and use it as a step for your big duck to get over the words. Jump by thrusting your hand upwards high up (at least 40 cm above the body). Or use the box and boards to build a ramp over the words. Or you can actually use the duck's head to push its body upwards. Or grab a plank, move the body onto the plank, and use the duck's head to lift the plank. The ducklings are short enough that they can follow you underneath the words if you get rid of any obstructions.
- To get over the bridge on the Duckdash level, you can grab boards and build a ramp to let your ducklings onto them. You can also fill in the gaps between bridges using those boards too. Or you can toggle off the ducklings' follow and just grab them and drop them across the other side of the bridge. Or you can put them on a plank and carry the plank carefully across the bridge.
- For getting past the moving obstacles, I'd recommend using the smooth pointing locomotion and just make a dash for it when the time is right for the quickest solution. Or you can toggle off the ducklings' follow, get behind an obstacle to keep your duck from moving, and just grab each duckling and extend your neck to drop them off on the other side.
There are many many different ways to get your ducklings and your duck across each obstacle. Please use and exploit the game mechanics, controls, and wacky physics ruthlessly.
Behind the scenes: Made in ~3 days for VR Jam 2023. I used this jam to learn the Unity XR Hands package and Unity Splines package. I had started making and then abandoned two other games before this game during the course of the jam because they weren't really fun. Some of you are complaining that the levels are too hard - I was worried that they were too easy! I did only start making the levels in the final 3 hours of the jam though, so sorry, no tutorial level. :)
The first abandoned concept I started on for the jam was about speech delivery where you live inside the mouth and need to grab words and toss them out. The second concept was for about email delivery, where you are a spam email trying to get to your victim and pass spam blockers and filters in a surrealistic cyber world. But neither of these really did anything novel with VR, which was my personal goal for this jam.
Third-party attributions: 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. Hand Tracking Gesture Recorder by jorgejgnz.
Tools: Unity, Blender, Audacity
Download
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Comments
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Hi.
One question: How do you map the hand-tracking data to the duck's beak?
Thank you and have a good one.
Basically look at the angle between the tip of the middle finger (top beak), and the base knuckle of the middle finger, and the tip of the thumb (bottom beak), and then map that angle to the angle between the top/bottom beaks.
This looks like so much fun!
Could it also be played on a Valve index?
Great idea and nice play but it is so easy to accidently change between 'stay' and 'follow' with disastrous consequences.
How many levels are there?
I've already spent 30 minutes on level one without success.
Thanks for playing! There are only 2 levels. The funny thing is that I didn't get to start making the levels until the final 3 hours of the jam, and was afraid it would be too easy, because my non-gamer playtester was able to figure everything out too easily.
Brute Force Solution: For an inelegant solution to all the obstacles, you could just tell all the ducklings to stay put, and use your beak carry each duckling to the next destination. But that can be tedious and slow. (There was meant to be a timer / leaderboard, but I didn't have time for that in the jam.)
Understand all the mechanics first: You can also use your beak to push the ducklings away from the precipice. Make sure you understand how to use the jumping mechanic, and both the pointing locomotion and the fist-grab-world locomotion - they each have an important purpose. Also, there are boards, balls, and boxes that the duck can grab, place, and jump onto, and build with allows for a ton of solutions.
Getting across Duckdash letters: For example, you have to figure a way to get your mama duck across the big "Duckdash" letters at the start of Level 1. One way is to place one of the square blocks next to the letters, and jump your duck onto that block, and then jump over the letters to the other side. The ducklings are short enough that they can crawl underneath the letters. Another much harder way is to build a ramp so that you can walk over the duckdash letters. Then the ducklings can just crawl underneath.
Getting across the bridge: For the bridge, there are a ton of different ways you can get across by grabbing a plank and using it to plug up the gaps between the bridges, or build ramps for the ducklings to climb up onto the bridge, and then use your beak to nudge them closer to the center if they are too close to the edges. Or if you're good at throwing, you can toss them across.
Moving Block wall: For the moving block wall, it's simplest to just have your ducks follow you while you dash across using the pointing locomotion. You just need to get all your ducklings together, time it right, and take that leap of faith mad dash.
The second level is more amusing and less dangerous. I'll make a narrated playthrough video for more hints.
Yeah the toggling between stay/follow can be tricky sometimes, especially when the headset misreads your fingers when one hand passes in front of the other, or it goes out of the tracking's field of view and it makes things up. It's important to have good lighting so that the headset can track your fingers better. Happy quacking!
Oh my, this has so much potential! Can't wait to play it and see how you're going to extend it after the Jam!