Concerning the title's archaic spelling of "complete", I was first inspired by a strand of articles from Low End Mac (their page on the MacBook Air here, for a sample)[lowendmac.com] - but while looking into it a bit more I discovered the existence of The Compleat Angler, a book from the 1600s about fishing, so to that end it's still within the aquatic-adjacent theme. So there! ;)

Upon starting the software, you'll be presented with the main menu:


Settings has settings:
Volume - Adjusts the volume of sound effects
Camera Mode - more on this later
Vsync - how quickly the application refreshes its display
Always on Top - whether or not the ducks get to be over everything else (not all the time though, Task Manager and also probably some other software can still take priority depending on your settings there)
Language - ...guess

NB: This screenshot is from the version pushed out on release day, where the volume slider was labeled as "Music volume" for no good reason

Either from clicking "Start" on the main menu or "Play" from the settings, you'll be taken to the duck selection screen, where you can pick up to 50 ducks to accompany you on your desktop adventures. If you're feeling indecisive, the "Select All" button picks one of each.

The order here isn't the same as in Placid Plastic Duck Simulator - just go with it

After you're done choosing, click "Start" and it's off to the races!
Getting a screengrab that would fit inside Steam's limitations took much more effort than I care to admit

Be advised that, out of the 47 ducks on offer, only the propeller hat duck (Timmy) has kept any special functions from Placid Plastic Duck Simulator - this means that, for example, the stone ducks will float and the cow duck won't be taken away mid-session.

Clicking on the duck gear pulls up a miniature settings panel:

Hot tip!!! You can also drag it around the screen - no need to deal with it being in the default position the whole time

The perspective camera mode allows the ducks to move all about the bottom half of your screen, while the orthographic camera mode restricts them to the very bottom (they still move around in the same 3D space, though, and Timmy can still fly up to cause trouble):

Talk about getting all your ducks in a row!

You can click on a duck to make it quack, just as in Placid Plastic Duck Simulator - make sure you have the volume slider turned up first, or you won't hear anything. (Ducks with special noises have kept them here, too!)

If you're really feeling up for a challenge, you can manually load another copy of the program by opening it from File Explorer, which will give you a second allotment of up to 50 ducks. How many is Too Many? That's for you to decide...

If you leave the software running for long enough (far less than the 90 minutes it takes in the main game), the flamingo floatie can make a surprise appearance - and as the knife duck's knife has been rendered non-functional here, it is invincible once again.


The cow floatie from the main game's Hippospace Download DLC map can also make a surprise appearance in the same way as the flamingo - despite the lack of any DLC ducks being present - and the two floaties can co-exist in the same space for the first time anywhere.


Finally, King Dubby is also here to reprise his role as a super-secret secret for people with big playtimes, although since this software doesn't use the Steam Cloud they've put the inter-session timer inside the save data itself here (as opposed to a Windows registry key, like how the main game does it). Every so often the software writes an ever-increasing value to its save file, although I'm not sure of the specific details of this particular implementation yet - watch this space for further developments...

April 10, 2024:
-The Unity splash screen has been turned off, saving several seconds on startup
-The "Music Volume" slider is now just "Volume"
-The duck gear icon now spawns close to the top-right corner of the screen instead of right in the middle