Duck Guardian by mahalis

Keep your lovable but rowdy siblings safe. Nudge them towards the center of the circle, or quack to call them to you, but be careful—if too many of them escape, your guardianship is up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsW55pQFUkM
Made in 48 hours using Unreal Engine, Cinema 4D, Photoshop, GarageBand, Voice Memos (guess whose quacks those are), and a sock-monkey squeaky toy (ditto).
This is my seventh Ludum Dare entry, but only my second 3D one; I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Give it a try, and let me know how far you get—my all-time high score is only around 350.
| Windows | https://mahalis.itch.io/duck-guardian |
| macOS | https://mahalis.itch.io/duck-guardian |
| Source code | https://github.com/mahalis/duck-guardian |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/duck-guardian |
Ratings
| Overall | 55th | 3.955⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 87th | 3.852⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 90th | 3.744⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 40th | 4.216⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 6th | 4.466⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 24th | 4.047⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 19th | 4.091⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 24th | 4.012⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 70🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
Brilliantly-well made and absolutely delightful!
Then I started abusing the heck out of the quack feature and basically playing it Katamari style, traveling around the edges as a huge blob of ducks!
Nice entry with style and some interesting gameplay.
...I wish I had more to say but it's pretty much perfect. I did end up playing as a katamari of ducks like the person above me though.
Wenk.
Even so, great work. The graphics and sfx are beautiful. The gameplay isn't anything exciting, but it's fun enough. Well done.
My friends always ask me why I carry a Rubber Duck with me every single day. I was never able to explain them properly why. Was it because I'm a programmer and feel the need to carry a Rubber Duck? Was it the satisfaction of squeaky noises left by the toy? Or was it simply love at first sight? For all of those questions, I feel like this game right here pretty much defines all of the charm there is with Rubber Ducks.
I had a whale of a time with it and let me tell you that this is one amazing and quite impressive _Compo_ entry! Everything, from the gameplay, to the graphics and even the audio felt top-notch and carefully crafted. The only smaller issue that I can really point out is, like other comments have said, that you can use the _Quacking_ ability to an insane level and pretty much make a agglomerate of ducks. Maybe, under all those ducks, an even more powerful duck is rising? Who knows. I did get up to 2500 points thanks to it though.
As a suggestion for the future in case you plan to do a post-compo version, I'd suggest increasing the difficulty curve of the game a bit more beyond simply adding a cool down for the quacking. Maybe make it so the circle moves around the sink as you get into later levels, forcing you to manage your movement and the position of the ducks together with you? Just a suggestion, as I've really had a great time with it and can't think of anything more to perfect the formula!
[In behalf of our team](https://twitter.com/WhalesAndGames), the only thing I can really say is... QUACKERS! Thank you for this duck-filled experience! :duck:
The sound effect of the ducklings gets a little annoying as well
Really cool game, it just needs some new mechanic to keep the fun going even at higher levels =D
