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Ducklinks's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #429 | 3.880 | 3.880 |
| Overall | #579 | 3.660 | 3.660 |
| Fun | #720 | 3.460 | 3.460 |
| Presentation | #901 | 3.640 | 3.640 |
Ranked from 50 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
You control a chain of ducklings, whose order in the chain matters.
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam
Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam
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Comments
I like this. It's very cute. I found the squirrels to be a bit of a pain. I managed to get a bunch of ducklings between 2-3 squirrels and every time I'd try to grab one, they'd immediately be distracted by one of the squirrels. Maybe there's need to be a per-duckling cooldown on that? Otherwise, I had fun with this. :D
Yeah, we've heard that from a few people now and I think it's definitely going to be implemented if we make a post-jam version of this. As-is sometimes you just have to cut your losses and leave them behind, but that sort of runs opposite to the goal of the game. Definitely a little frustrating. Thanks for playing, though! Glad to hear you enjoyed it!
Cute idea and cuter art. The different ducklings( and dog) make the levels very interesting. Cool little jam game.
Hey, thanks for playing! It was a bit close getting all of those duckling types in, so I'm glad to hear they paid off.
This game is awesome! Reminds me a lot of Untitled Goose Game lol. Those ugly ducklings were really getting my blood boiling XD. I think that having a counter of how many available ducklings on the map there are would be great.
Hah, happy to hear the Untitled Goose Game inspiration came through! It was on our minds at least a little bit while we were building this. Good call on the counter - that's something I wish we'd had time for. Thanks for playing, and I'm glad you liked it!
like the style and idea. seems more fitting for a high score type game than for a level system though.
Oh, I hadn't considered that. Maybe randomizing the ducklings a bit would facilitate a more score-oriented approach in the same space. Cool idea. Thanks for playing!
Good to see you got all of your ducks in a row for this jam ;)
Nice little game, reminded me of the old Sega game Flicky (a favourite of mine and I recommend it to everyone)!
Level design wise it would have been nice to start at or near the fountain so I had a better idea of where I was coming/going. And perhaps if the camera clamped to the map borders I would have had a better idea of the map size/where I was in relation to the bounds.
If I would have suggested anything to add to the game it would be for an additional score tier you could get for depositing all ducks at the pond at once. Or maybe that the score was entirely based on how many you bank at once. Either way, I think acknowlegding the chain could be leveraged in some way.
The ugly ducklings turning to swans was a nice touch :D
Wow, you know exactly how to hurt me, huh?
Yeah, we had the thought to start the player at the fountain just a little too late to get it in the final cut, but I think it would have helped out. Clamping the camera would be good, too. As for the massive chain, I think adding some sort of multiplier for that would be really smart. The copycat duckling sort of addresses that, but it's not as cut and dry as a modifier would be. Thanks for the detailed feedback, and thanks for playing!
PS: I think you're the second person to mention Flicky - I may have to go hunt that one down...
Unique take on the theme! It was a little unclear how to finish a level at first. It would help to see like a "ducklings left" in the UI or something. I like that you expand on the core mechanic of "collect ducklings" with the distractions and other duck types. With a little more polish, I can see this being either a relaxing duck game or a troll-like game with absurd difficulty. Well done, team!
Adding a counter was on the list but it didn't make the cut due to time restrictions. I think you're spot on about it, though. Thanks for the kind words, and thanks for giving it a go!
Really fun and adorable game! I found it very intuitive and honestly don't have much else to say about it. Great work with this!
Hey, thanks! I appreciate the kind words :)
This was fun! Liked how the little ducks lined up after you and how I had to deal with the different obstacles. The art was simple but cute, the dynamic music was a nice touch too! Once I found a duckling out in the void but other than that I haven’t encountered any issues. Nice work!
Hey, glad you liked it! We forgot to re-bake a couple navmeshes around the deadline, so a few ducks decided to do whatever they wanted. I like to think they're happy out there. Thanks for playing!
Heh- a cutely chaotic game there :)
I did find that it was almost impossible to recover from hitting breadcrumbs; but after learning my lesson they weren’t too hard to avoid.
Yeah, they can be real killers if you don't spot them in time. An easy recovery option could be beneficial. Thanks for playing!
Ducks are pretty freaking cool! I liked trying to keep my little ducklings safe. Good job! I really enjoyed the game and painterly hand drawn looks is very nice.
Good job!
Hey, thanks so much for the kind words! Happy to hear you liked it.
Hehe this is game is hilarious!!! The theme, the characters (especially the ugly ducklings), the funky music that accelerates when you are out of time makes me smile a lot :-). the game play is very interesting and cute. It reminds me in a way of the old Sega MegaDrive game called Flicky, but with your own original twists on it. Congrats for the submission!
Glad you liked it! We were aiming for sort of cute, weird, and playful so I'm happy to hear that it came across. I'd never heard of Flicky, but did a quick search and that looks super interesting. I can see how it might trigger some memories. Thanks for playing!
A nice entry to the jam, the mechanic is quite unique and the music speeding up at the end of the level is a nice touch.
There are a few things that I felt could be tweaked, when I hit breadcrumbs it is quite difficult to recover from it, the ducklings jump on it as soon as I collect them back, maybe have a mechanic where the breadcrumbs disappear after would make it easier. It could also be nice to have a kwak button to scare off the squirrels, that might make them more fun to encounter.
Overall an interesting game, good job!
Thanks for the feedback! We hadn't thought of making the breadcrumbs disappear but I really like that idea. It would maintains the same amount of chaos but still give you a way out once you've been stuck for a few seconds. We had considered a quack to call ducklings closer (and away from distractions) but cut it for time. Making it scare squirrels is definitely worth considering. Thanks for playing!
Quite a nice little game. I liked the interplay with the mechanics, where you often needed to pick up the ducklings in a certain order for maximum points. It had a good risk/reward balance. The music speeding up was a great touch, it really added to the chaotic feeling of the game.
There are a couple of things you could do to help polish the game up if you wanted. I'd suggest adding some kind of counter at the bottom that tells you the number of ducklings in the level, and their types. It would help to plan the position of ducklings in the chains, and would give players an idea of how much time they had to work with. I'd also suggest increasing the cooldown on the ducks distraction. A couple of times I'd loose trails of ducklings around multiple distractions and it became near impossible to recover them, and with no restart button I was often left waiting the timer out before making a new attempt.
Overall this is a great entry, with some clever mechanics, and a really unique take on the theme. Well done!
Hey, thanks for the detailed feedback! We really tried to balance out the risk / reward, so I'm glad that came through.
As for the polish, these are all really good ideas. We wanted to include a count but wound up cutting it for time. Including the duckling types in that somehow would probably be a good idea. The distraction zones are a tricky one because I think they create a lot of chaos, which can be fun, but you're right that there should probably be an escape hatch built in there to keep a bad streak from completely ruining your run.
Again, thanks for the input, and thanks so much for playing. I'm glad you liked it!
Interesting game idea. Keep up the great work. :). Really like the concept behind it. Kinda like snake with a twist.
Snake with a twist is high praise! Thanks for playing, and I'm glad you liked it!
Increasing the speed of the music as the timer got closer to zero was a great touch. Really fun game!
Hey, thanks for playing! Our audio guy popped into the chat frantically sometime during day two with that idea and I'm happy to say we ran with it.
Cute game, I like how you introduced new types of ducks (and friends) to balance their strengths and weaknesses out. Well done, guys.
P.S.: No dog petting here either though ;)
Ahh, you've discovered my greatest shame! Thanks for the review, regardless. Glad you liked it!
So this is how it feels to have children... Noted.
Jokes aside this was quite fun and interesting game! And making player be able to play further without needing to fully collect all ducklings lets player enjoy more of the levels instead of (grinding?)
Enjoyed this one!
Hey, thanks! We wanted to make sure everyone was able to experience it on their first time through. Balancing jam games is suuuper tough, so we figured it'd be best to go easy where we could. Thanks for playing!
A nice take on the theme and well executed. I like that the time was taken to slowly and clearly tutorialize the individual elements, something plenty of other games didn't have the time for.
Aside of a few ducklings consumed by the black void I have nothing to complain about.
Thanks! I spent a fair bit of time getting those tutorials running, so I'm glad to hear they're doing the trick. Those void-born ducklings, though... Such an easy fix for them, but we only noticed after the deadline. They haunt me.
Thanks for playing!
This was cute. I loved how the music would start to speed up as you ran out of time. It was slightly anticlimactic that gathering them little by little into the fountain was fine (got a lower score, but safe ducklings!)
I did want to mention that the initial screen load-in dropped in a bit fast, as though something was wrong with the screen (I don't think anything actually was but it was also trying to do something it required admin access for and I wasn't sure what, didn't end up interfering with the game though).
But yeah definitely a fun concept and a challenging task to keep the ducklings on track! ^_^ Thanks for the fun game.
Good point on going bit by bit. It's the safer option for sure, but once the other duckling types come into play it's hard to get a good score that way. Hopefully that adds some risk / reward.
And yeah, I have no clue what's up with that network access request but I've seen it pop up for a few streamers, too. My hunch so far is that it's because of Wwise. I've made plenty of Unity games that didn't have that issue but the one time we try building with Wwise it's asking for access for some reason.
Thanks for playing!
what the dog doin!!
Following it's heart! Thanks for playing :)