The Halloween duck race

Every October the river gets a little spookier. Random Duck Race has a Halloween scenery: the same free, fair duck race, run at night past bare twisted trees, glowing jack-o’-lanterns, a graveyard behind an iron fence and a haunted house with its windows lit — while ghosts float over the far bank and bats circle a full moon. It turns any random draw into a Halloween game: picking a student, drawing a party prize, judging a costume contest or deciding who tells the next ghost story.

From 19 to 31 October everyone starts in the Halloween scenery automatically. Any other time of year, pick it yourself in two clicks.

Start a Halloween race in three steps

1. Add the names. Type or paste them, one per line — your class, your party guests, your stream chat. Up to 1,000 names fit in one race, and you can import a CSV or Excel file.
2. Pick the Halloween scenery. Press the scenery button at the top of the screen (next to the sound button) and choose Halloween. From 19 to 31 October it is already picked for you.
3. Press Continue, then Start. The ducks line up on the pontoon, the countdown runs, and the river picks the winner — with the full finishing order on the result screen.

Want a head start? The Start a Halloween race button at the top opens the game in the Halloween scenery with twelve spooky names already on the start line.

What’s in the Halloween scenery

• A night of its own: a violet sky over an orange glow, purple mist on the water and a big moon, with the lamps along the river lit.
• The far bank: twisted bare trees, pumpkin patches with carved, glowing faces, graveyards and haunted houses, ghosts drifting and bats circling overhead.
• A spooky start line: pumpkins, a bubbling cauldron, a broomstick, a black cat, candles and a gravestone on the pontoon.
• Halloween hoardings along the course: Happy Halloween, Trick or treat, BOO! and Spooky duck race.
• Its own music, Haunted Hop — organ, theremin and rattling bones — unless you picked another track in Settings.
• Costumed ducks: the Lifestyle family has vampires, witches and more, so you can dress the whole field for the night.

The ghosts and bats are animated on the graphics card, so the Halloween night runs smoothly on phones and on the classroom projector alike.

Eight Halloween ideas for the ducks

• Who reads the ghost story: race the class list; the winner reads the next page aloud.
• Trick-or-treat order: the finishing order is the order the kids pick from the candy bowl.
• Costume contest tie-breaker: two costumes on the same score? Let the river settle it.
• Spooky vocabulary race: each duck is a Halloween word — the winner is the word the class has to use in a sentence.
• Pumpkin carving teams: race everyone once and deal the finishing order into teams (see the random team generator).
• The party prize draw: one duck per guest, the winner takes the prize — or run several prizes from one race with the full finishing order (see the giveaway picker guide).
• The office Halloween party: who judges the costumes, who brings the cake next year, which horror film you watch.
• A Halloween stream: viewers type !join in your Twitch chat to get a duck, and the race runs live on stream (here’s how).

31 spooky duck names

One for every night of October. Copy them into the game, or press the button at the top of the page to race the first twelve.

1. 1Count Quackula
2. 2Pumpkin Spice
3. 3Boo Berry
4. 4Ghoulia
5. 5Jack O’Quackin
6. 6Witchy Waddles
7. 7Frankenduck
8. 8Mummy Mallard
9. 9Bat Wing
10. 10Candy Corn
11. 11Hocus Pocus
12. 12Skelequack
13. 13Werequack
14. 14Phantom Paddles
15. 15Cauldron Bubbles
16. 16Zombie Drake
17. 17Spooky Feathers
18. 18Cobweb
19. 19Midnight
20. 20Broomstick
21. 21Goblin
22. 22Banshee
23. 23Raven
24. 24Moonlight
25. 25Creepy Crawly
26. 26Gravestone
27. 27Fang
28. 28Howler
29. 29Trick
30. 30Treat
31. 31Casper Quack

Need more? There are 100 cute and funny duck names for the rest of the year.