When I first saw a glimpse of Babbling Brook, I couldn’t help but think that it looked utterly adorable. I mean, it’s a game that requires nothing more than playing with sand and water to get rubber ducks from point A to point B, right?  

That is partially true. That is, after all, the basic premise of the game, but there is so much more to Babbling Brook than initially meets the eye, especially when it comes to the main game mode. It’s challenging, at times frustrating, but always impossibly cute and will keep you coming back for more, even if you don’t fully understand why. 

Quacking under the pressure

I consider myself to be pretty well-versed on the topic of rubber ducks. My daughter has a sizable collection that comes out during every bath time experience, and I’ve even got a couple of special ‘designer’ rubber ducks that are purely for display purposes and have never gotten wet in their lives. I am, or at least I thought I was, something of a rubber duck aficionado. So when given the task of moving these plastic cuties from point A to point B, I thought it would be easy. 

I was wrong. 

Getting anything from point A to point B seems like a simple task, but Babbling Brook challenges you to do it by manipulating the terrain of a small area, using sand to guide water that will eventually carry your duckies to their end point. I have great experiences building channels from the sea to the middle of beaches as a child, and I thought I would be good at this. Turns out I’m terrible at it, and there’s more to herding ducks than terrain manipulation. 

Water goes where?

At random points throughout a run, additional piles of ducks appear in select locations of the small map. You need to make water reach those piles of ducks so that you can sweep them along to the end point, but I’m convinced that certain locations are impossible to get water to. There are rocks in the way, and you can’t remove enough sand to go under the rocks and the water can’t reach a height to go over them, so how do you do it?

Maybe I’m just terrible at coded water physics, possibly just water physics in general, but I found myself giving up on these piles of ducks that seemed inaccessible. They were lost to me, wasted ducks, left to fend for themselves while I focused on the ducks that were easier to transport using my manipulated streams. Sometimes I would strategically create piles of sand to boost errant ducks toward the water, but that’s a little time-consuming, not to mention tedious. 

On top of that, you have little sparkly circles showing up both in and out of your carefully crafted stream that will boost the number of ducks. Not physically, that would be overwhelming, but each duck that passes through a glowing circle, then counts for more ducks when it passes the finish line. It’s a constant battle of terrain manipulation and balancing water flow, and don’t even get me started on the whirlpools that show up every now and then. 

Finding my (webbed) feet

Yes, Babbling Brook can become increasingly frustrating as you play through a scenario and try to balance out the various aspects of herding rubber ducks, but none of that seems to take away from how utterly enjoyable and lovable this little indie game truly is. What I’ve said above sounds negative, but that’s not how I feel about Babbling Brook. If anything, I find myself wanting to play more and more, and my 10,000 ducks floating around in the unseen sea can attest to that. 

It’s weirdly addictive, hearing those little quacks as the rubber ducks pass through the glowing circles. Seeing a duck cross the finish line and float out to the sea that you never get to see is bizarrely satisfying, and despite the questions of how I get the water where the game seems to want water to go, the challenge only adds to the appeal. It’s frustrating, sure, but in the same way as a toddler learning to walk. 

You just want those little ducks to do well, and you’re ultimately responsible for making that happen, even when it seems impossible. 

Babbling Brook is an indie game developed by Some Random Designing and is set for release at some point in 2025, although there isn’t a set release date just yet. If you want to enjoy the duckling corralling experience, there is a demo available to download and try through Steam right now.