DUCK: Dangerous Ultimate Cartridge Kidnapper Reviews

I hate not recommending a game by a small dev and I did have a bit of fun, but there's some fundamental problems with the game's design and marketing that make my review feel more like a warning. All the store page videos make it look like WarioWare with lots of short mini games. Most of DUCK is that and these microgames are pretty fun. Even when things get difficult, the original mode gives you an opportunity to enter a cheat code to replay and easy mode just lets you retry it regardless. Then you get to the boss levels. They generally feel like really polished game jam submissions, but some are way too long. I paid 8.99 hoping for a game with fun, brisk mini games, not a 2D forced movement precision platforming level that requires you to memorize a very specific route through a pretty large level. So much trial and error, just too frustrating. Another boss game is a first person labyrinth where you collect some stuff, which the dev assures us it can be completed in under one minute in the discussion boards. It certainly takes a lot longer when you don't know the layout and have to memorize it, although once I figured out the audio hints it was a lot easier to blow through. Nobody who purchases a product expecting microgames wants to spend so much time figuring out mazes or being frustrated by a level that requires so much memorization to get through the somewhat strict time limits, although the easy mode setting is very forgiving compared to the original mode. I guarantee this game would have closer to 100% positive user reviews if the extra long boss games were designed to be shorter. Most people are better off avoiding DUCK. It's worth it if you like WarioWare, just expect it to not be very fun sometimes.

A wonderful retro style game. A huge variety of mechanics, wrapped in nice graphics, referring to the times of SEGA and Dendy. Fine-tuning the difficulty allows you to get the same pleasure for both a beginner and a seasoned player. Well, a bunch of cute ducks of course! I definitely recommend it. --- Замечательная игра в стиле ретро. Огромное разнообразие механик, завернуто в приятную графику, отсылающую во времена SEGA и Dendy. Тонкая настройка сложности позволяет получать одинаковое удовольствие как новичку, так и бывалому игроку. Ну и куча милых утеек конечно же! Безусловно рекомендую.

From the looks of it, many users already compare this title to the Warioware series. I, for one, find it more similar to an old compilation game for the PSP called "WTF - Work time fun", since both games had quite a peculiar selection of unusual minigames, both games explain the rules of each minigame, and both had a selection of games that were either pretty easy or quite difficult. Likewise you would find some cool ones and some dull ones as well. I liked that game quite a bit, and I definitely like this one just as much if not more. At the moment, I'm stuck at Dennis' boss game "Mad Mei" since it seems to drag for a bit too long, but I'm sure I'll figure it out soon enough. All in all, if you like compilation games and are not among the easily frustrated gamers, you'll find a solid game with a nice challenge. As a personal note to the game's developer: Don't get discouraged! I'm sure the game will improve with just a few more tweaks to some of the more frustrating minigames in the selection. The "maze" boss minigame definitely improved with the latest patch. (I sure couldn't make head or tails out of that one before, but I found it much better now!) Keep up the good work! :)

Wow, what an amazing throwback to childhood. Developer managed to perfectly grasp the atmosphere of classic retro games, and reimagine them into something that can be very relevant and more importantly FUN to play today! Sound design and music are particular highlights of this game - highly recommended for everyone! :)

A cool nostalgic solution, the game turned out to be very impressive with beautiful music and pleasant graphics.

Funny and memetic game. Game consists of 5 rounds each containing 20 mini games. Take it slow and easy and you will have fun with it. In some mini games rules are not entirely obvious but with time you'll figure it out. Also a few important notes: * Game doesn't save progress inside the round, so don't start it if you don't have enough time. After successfully finishing the round progress is saved. * If you choose default "Original" difficulty there will be "One more time" mini game each time you lose, which may become infuriating after playing too much. There is no such thing in other difficulties, so I recommend to switch it if pressing arrow buttons each time you lose becomes annoying.

So I'm a big lover of mini game compilations but this game is straight up infuriating. Some of the mini games are enjoyable then the others are either RIDICULOUSLY HARD or just irritating. Don't suggest this game at all , Buy SPOOKWARE instead. The story is much more entertaining than Spook cartridge that will kill you if you don't win. Also like to make a note that i ALSO felt very Motion Sick on the second boss due to the 3D maze and the moving and spinning around in a panic to beat it.

A chic collection of mini-games in 8-bit style! The idea of some of the games was taken from the original NES games, some of the games were invented from scratch. The style of the drawn ducks and the environment is cool. The music and sounds are perfect. DUCK will appeal to those who spent a lot of time playing NES in childhood and adolescence, and also, thanks to its easy controls, is perfect for children as an introduction to video games. The downside for me was a few very difficult mini-games that just drove me furious.

[h1]Quck-my beer[/h1] Ladies and gentlemen, we got them? Freaking 100 in 1! This game will have you quacking with excitement as you waddle through levels, dodging enemies and playing some old stuff. [b][u]STORY/LORE[/u][/b] In DUCK, you play as a daring duck who has been tasked with saving the world from the evil Ultimate Cartridge Kidnapper. Now, I know what you're thinking, "What does a duck know about saving the world?" Well, apparently more than we thought, because this feathery hero is up to the task. [b][u]GAMEPLAY[/u][/b] The gaming process is where this game really shines. You control your duck with precision, flapping your wings to jump and avoid obstacles. You can also collect power-ups to help you on your mission, including a speed boost and invincibility. And let's not forget about the cartridges - collecting these will unlock new levels and abilities. Trust me, this is will be so damn awesome. [b][u]STYLE(GRAPHIC/SOUND DESIGN)[/u][/b] This game may not have the most advanced graphics, but what it lacks in realism, it makes up for in charm. The bright colors and cartoonish design of the levels and enemies will have you feeling like you're in a classic cartoon. [b][u]PROBLEMS[/u][/b] Of course, no game is perfect, and this project does have its problems. For one, the controls can be a bit finicky, and it can be frustrating when your duck doesn't jump when you want it to. Also, the game can be a bit short - I beat it in just a few hours. But let's be honest, you're not playing DUCK for a deep, immersive experience. You're playing it for the sheer joy of being a duck on a mission. DUCK is a quacking good time. It's not the most complex game out there, but it doesn't need to be. It's a fun, light-hearted adventure that will have you laughing and smiling from start to finish. So if you're looking for a game that will have you feeling like a hero, look no further than DUCK. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43513836]FOLLOW MY COURATOR SIGHT[/url] [i]*click*[/i]

Not very friendly in terms of accessibility. Retro-themed or not, that's no excuse to: * Throw in a lot of button mashing games, enough that I went and bound single and multiple button turbos via Steam's controller profiles. My days of playing Smash Melee and/or Mario Party are long gone, and I have low tolerance for thoughtless inputs/mashes. * Have several tests where one must quickly identify colors of similar shades, some of which are mild or even imperceptible to me. I'm red-green colorblind and it got in the way more than once. * Put in a mandatory sequence of ~9 randomized button presses while a very annoying tone plays (unless changing the difficulty from Original) within a 5 second timer every time a game is failed. While trivial for me to perform, it wasn't trivial for my SO, and between having to do this and having to watch every game's intro every run, there's many games where you spend more time doing this than playing the game! There's even a Steam thread where someone brought this issue up and the developer was entirely unsympathetic, claiming that's how retro games are...which is a load of bs. * Have several cases of "Gotcha!" where if you haven't played the game before, information you're not privy to will have you dead man walking, such as off-screen obstacles where you need to be in certain positions or speeds yet have no clue beforehand that that's the case. * Balance is all over the place, with some games being trivial regardless of difficulty setting and others being difficult even on Easy. * The boss of Story's second chapter induced motion sickness on me. Its one of those 16-bit era first person dungeon POVs, with an awkward camera and generic walls. You can't skip boss fights, so this hard-locked me out of getting to more content for over an hour, until my SO was able to get one successful clear. And this is only having seen the first 60 of 100 games. Its not for hating retro - I grew up in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, and have been exposed to and enjoyed games that predate those eras. But most of those games don't go out of their way to annoy like this game does. And if you're thinking this is more of a WarioWare style game, the pacing is wrong for that too - controls are not intuitive without hints enabled, game intros/outros take too long, and ultimately its less about reaction speed and more about filler. I'll probably attempt to finish due to sunk cost, but I don't anticipate enough changes happening to make this a positive review in the future. --- Regarding the developer's comment: 1) At the time of this review, I have seen 60 games. Of those, I can think of several off memory that rely on button mashing (jungle escape, cat dinner, baseball, race with water hurdles) where the main point of the minigame is the speed of the mashing. There are others where it can be argued, such as the tortoise/hare race where a preset order of keys need repeated, that mashing may or may not be present. 3) The problem is when I want to play original difficulty without the added tedium. My experience is that the "cheat code" sequence is both time wasted, and in the case of the partner I'm playing with, very stressful. But if I don't pick original, letting them play the Easy half and me the Normal/Hard half, then we can't share the experience. To borrow a comparison from a well known game, think of L-canceling from Smash Melee. It was already correct to do, it wasn't hard to do, but it must be done since failing to do so doubled your landing lag. In essence, it made players do extra inputs that had no purpose other than to be mandatory, since anyone decent at the game wouldn't mess them up. Your cheat code system is just like this. Listen to an annoying sound while inputting arbitrary presses, and even if I mess up, there's enough time to do it again...except for players who aren't so fast and get screwed over by such a system existing. It serves no purpose other than to gatekeep and/or waste a player's time. 6) I have since found that the game does not handle mirroring well unless I both turn off G-sync and force 60 FPS through Nvidia Control Panel. If I do that, the framerate is more stable, at the cost of having to change it back whenever playing unmirrored on my main monitor. While G-sync is not something you have control over, there should be a setting in the options for setting a frame limit, and ideally for toggling V-sync as well.