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A jam submission

DucklinksView game page

A time-based collectathon about building a rickety chain of ducklings.
Submitted by morrilet (@morrilet), JeremyHelsel — 22 minutes, 23 seconds before the deadline
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Ducklinks's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Originality#4293.8803.880
Overall#5793.6603.660
Fun#7203.4603.460
Presentation#9013.6403.640

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

Viewing comments 20 to 1 of 27 · Previous page · First page
Submitted(+1)

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!

Developer(+1)

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!

Submitted(+1)

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.

Developer

Yeah, they can be real killers if you don't spot them in time. An easy recovery option could be beneficial. Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

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!

Developer(+1)

Hey, thanks so much for the kind words! Happy to hear you liked it.

Submitted(+1)

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!

Developer

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!

Submitted(+1)

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!

Developer

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!

Submitted(+1)

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!

Developer

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!

Submitted(+1)

Interesting game idea. Keep up the great work. :). Really like the concept behind it. Kinda like snake with a twist. 

Developer

Snake with a twist is high praise! Thanks for playing, and I'm glad you liked it!

Submitted(+1)

Increasing the speed of the music as the timer got closer to zero was a great touch. Really fun game!

Developer

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.

Submitted(+1)

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 ;)

Developer

Ahh, you've discovered my greatest shame! Thanks for the review, regardless. Glad you liked it!

Submitted(+1)

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!

Developer(+1)

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!

Submitted(+1)

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.

Developer

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!

Submitted(+1)

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.

Developer(+1)

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!

Submitted(+1)

what the dog doin!!

Developer(+1)

Following it's heart! Thanks for playing :)

Submitted(+1)

Very cute! Loved this.

Developer

Glad to hear it! Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Cute idea to guide ducks to the pond. :)  Good hazards to spice up the difficulty! 

Developer(+1)

Glad you liked it. Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

It was a very cute game and the tutorial texts were fun to read. The gameplay itself was fun. The way in which the different ducklings and the other creatures interacted with each other made the game very enjoyable. I also love how the game doesn't force you to play a particular level but lets you select which levels you want to play. The music is also apt for the gameplay. Well done :)

Developer

Thanks! I spent a little too long on those tutorial texts, haha. And yeah, definitely didn't want to lock any of the content - jam reviewers are busy people! Plus it saves time ;)

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Very cute, and very fun! I love that there were dogs that thought they were ducklings, so cuuute. Very interesting mechanics with the different duckling types in the queue behind the mother ducks, especially stuff like the ugly ducklings. Good job! Very addicting haha

Developer

Hey, thanks for playing! The dogs were originally going to be hazards (they would bark and scare the ducklings) but time got tight and we didn't want to put the art to waste. Glad they're getting some love!

Submitted(+1)

This game made me smile.  Really cute and fun mechanics!  Ducklings being distracted by everything feels accurate somehow.  If only there were more mother ducks, then it wouldn't be a problem (this actually happens in the real world sometimes, where multiple mother ducks will guard their ducklings together, and more ducklings survive as a result). 

The different duckling types were creative and added a nice strategy element to the game.  The last two levels were pure chaos (in my play through, at least).  I really enjoyed this game; this is my personal favorite game of the jam so far!  I would highly recommend.

Developer

I had no idea ducks did that - definitely tucking that one away for trivia night...

Really happy to hear you liked it, too! I've watched a few people play it by now and I think chaos describes those last levels accurately, haha. Can you really blame the ducklings, though? They are still children, after all. Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

In the later levels it's more like a puzzle game where you have to plan which duck you put in which place. Nice work!

Developer

Happy to hear that came through! The later duckling types were a last-minute addition.

Submitted(+1)

Nice game. I like the graphics and music.

Developer

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

Viewing comments 20 to 1 of 27 · Previous page · First page