Crazy Bird Hunt is healing my childhood Duck Hunt shame

Those of us who are a certain age (my fellow over-30s unite!) will remember the joy of Duck Hunt, the game in which your only objective is to shoot as many ducks as possible and get the most points. Crazy Bird Hunt takes that concept, adds incremental progression, and turns it into something incredibly addictive. 

It’s hard to believe I’ve lived long enough to see Duck Hunt of all things make a reappearance in my gaming repertoire. The original NES game was released way, way back in 1984, and there’s something touching about the fact that its basic formula still has a foothold in modern gaming, albeit with new mechanics thrown in. 

Apparently, according to the Steam page, the game is more inspired by the 90s PC game Moorhuhn than it is by Duck Hunt, but my brain refuses to make that connection. The bird design may be very “Moorhuhn”, but the art style is absolutely “Duck Hunt”. My childhood experience was Duck Hunt, and that’s where my mind immediately went while playing the Crazy Bird Hunt demo. 

Oh, shoot

I can’t say I was ever all that good at the original Duck Hunt, but I think I can safely blame my poor historical performance on the tools I had at my disposal at the time. Let’s face it, 80s technology wasn’t quite up to the standard we’ve come to expect in the 40-odd years since then (ew); trying to shoot a tiny moving duck on a CRT television with a plastic Zapper wasn't exactly the height of precision gaming. Not to mention having to deal with siblings controlling the ducks.

However, and I think this is what makes Crazy Bird Hunt so completely addictive, I’m apparently something of a sharpshooter when armed with a mouse. The ducks (and chickens, which have inexplicably gained the ability to fly) quickly started to fall out of the sky in staggering numbers. Somehow, this obscure little incremental take on the old formula has allowed me to heal my inner child’s shame over her poor childhood performance. 

More bang for your buck 

Crazy Bird Hunt is an incremental game, so it’s only natural that there are upgrades available to purchase after each run. Each duck you shoot down rewards you with gold medals that can then be exchanged for upgrades that increase how much each duck is worth, widen the area that’s affected each time you shoot, or boost how much a kill streak builds over time. 

But those basic upgrades aren’t the only things you can spend your money on. Once you’ve made every bird worth its weight in gold, you can start to spend your extra cash on upgrades to your gun. Each upgraded gun has a larger ammo capacity and base hit radius, reducing the downtime spent reloading during a run while reducing how accurate you need to be. 

Trust me, when the screen is full of possible gold medals with wings, you don’t want to waste time making sure you have bullets left. 

Birds of a feather

I’ve played a significant chunk of the Crazy Bird Hunt demo and unlocked what seems to be a large part of the upgrade tree, at least from what I can see. However, I have thus far only earned gold medals, despite there apparently being two other currencies to unlock. There are two types of feathers, black and white, that are eventually needed for some upgrades. 

I had expected the feathers to start dropping when I unlocked the addition of geese to the menagerie of targets, but apparently that’s not where they come from. According to the Steam page, you can eventually unlock both black and white swans, which I suspect is where these feathers come from. I haven’t got that far yet, so I can neither confirm nor deny my own suspicions. 

I’ll update this as soon as I can do either. 

Crazy Bird Hunt is marked as “coming soon” on Steam, so we’ll likely be waiting a while for a confirmed release date. However, if you have fond childhood memories of duck-shooting games, either Moorhuhn or Duck Hunt, this little incremental game is absolutely worth checking out. You can play the demo on Steam now.