New card battler Placid Plastic Deck blends Pokémon with Inscryption using the dark magic of ducks

Like many an addled follower of the games industry, I have recently fallen under the spell of Balatro, and especially, its jokers. The mechanics and overall presentation may be exquisite, but it’s the thrill of discovering another mutant jester modifier that has me lunging for the Steam Deck in my sleep. Well, now those jokers have competition: ducks. Step or rather waddle forward Placid Plastic Deck – A Quiet Quest, a quacked-up card battler which somehow takes inspiration from both the Pokémon series and Inscryption.

In A Quiet Quest you play Zoi, a pixelart lassie of the top-down RPG persuasion, who has recently fallen out with her best friend. Zoi’s method of mending the dispute? Assemble the ultimate deck of duck cards, a dueck if you will. These ducks ain’t just the usual mud-shuffling oafs who stink up my local park with their raucous cries and open-air breeding, mind you. They include Shark Ducks, Hypno Ducks, Bee Ducks and the quintessential Yellow Duck – the Mickey Mouse of the clutch. My favourite so far is the Marble Duck, an Ozymandian totem of mystique.

How exactly you’ll play cards with these adorable avians remains to be seen, but it seems to involve tiered, aqua-blue playing boards that tantalise and confuse with whirring cogwork and some kind of duck progression pond on the left.

All this unfolds in “a world of magical realism filled with both good and not-so-good, ordinarily weird characters”. The Inscryption parallels may not be so apparent in the announcement trailer above – they are rather more so in the previous teaser, which you can find on the Steam page. Friends, I fear these supposedly “placid” ducks may be lying to us in some way. I fear this quest may not be so quiet after all. There’s no release date yet.