For Ducks' Sake

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All working now. You got us during submission hour as we were pushing the build up.

Your game is sooo cool, congratulation !!
the animation is really beautifull and the game is really fun and challenging, sounds and musics are great too !
You really made a good game congratulation again !

Thanks so much!!

Score: 23300. So addicting, I loved the cute ducklings and was so mad at those hungry gnomes stealing them all! Excellent music, art, and sound design; the laugh was a great touch.

I enjoyed the idea of shooting gnomes that should be an Olympic sport, sadly every time I played through my guy would get stuck only going in one direction and I got stuck on the side of the screen. Don't know if the controller had an issue but still had a blast shooting gnomes. Good job.

The animations are so nice. I feel so sad though when I lose because mama cries =(

I love this game, i love the idea. Congrats!

I really enjoyed this game! The banner image you posted was so cute, that's what made it stick out to me - your art style is really polished and refined. The gameplay was decent, but could be a bit more challenging. In a post-Ludum Dare version of the game it would be nice to have different types of gnomes. For example, you could have gnomes that are larger and slower, but have more health and grab more ducklings. I don't play on gamepads very much, but when trying to play on my Xbox controller it would be really nice to have clicking the right stick be mapped to fire as well. Only being able to shoot with the A button means that you can't aim and shoot at the same time, since you'd have to move your thumb off the right stick. I hope you make a post-Ludum Dare version of this game, it's really fun! Regards, -Elnu

Really enjoyed this, managed to get a score of 14,000. Is that good? :D I did notice at the end there was a very long wait between all my ducklings being kidnapped and the game over screen being loaded. All in all a very fun game and a nice take on the theme.

Loved the idea it reminds me of a kids game trying to steal marbles from other kids baskets. Scored 27000, its not so apparent at game over? But overall great fun little arcade game!

Nice game! I like gnomes' sound :) and animations. Ducklings are so cute :) Cool idea!

Great entry :) Can see this becoming addicting!

Thanks for the feedback.
This was the first time I played it since it was published late last night and I think it went really well. Props to Gary for making it work.

I managed to get 25900.

Good looking graphics! Like others have mentioned I had to wait a long time for the Game Over.

Thanks, the Game Over timing is a bug that slipped through.

Love the character design and colors- the graphics in general are fabulous. The sound really brought me back to the 8 bit loops of Nintendo. More scenarios and maybe some different enemy types and Robotron beware! ;) Thanks for the game!

It's not the _only_ bug that's slipped through!!!
Still, it's not a bad result for 72 hours. We had planned many more elements to the game... more enemies, individual waves, powerups, etc. there's some input updates I'd like to do as well, but this is what we managed to get done in the time.
Thanks for all the great feedback guys, we really appreciate it... and props right back @super-hadoken for making the game so darn beautiful.
(Also, that's him making the gnome sounds!) 😀

Woooo... 33400 is the score to beat!

It is a funny and very well made jam game. Well done.

I liked how the goal was to protect your babies. Definitely a new spin on the top-down shooter. Great job!

Nice little shooter. If the gmome sounds were 8 bit, this game would wholly recapture the spirit of 8 bit era.

They have taken that Duck's children. Prepare to die. Lots of fun humor in the presentation. Very simple, but very fun.

Let me start with a HI HI HI =D, really funny game. Graphics looks like in an old game i cant remember, but i love them =).

Score: 20000

I really like it, it's simple and addictive!

The art is wonderful and the music is great!

I don't have much to say, it's a funny, well-made little game!


I only have two real criticisms.

- for mouse-based shooting, it was very inaccurate. I'd expect 360-degree aiming but it seemed like 8-directiom?
- also with mouse aiming, it's too easy to accidently click outside the game and mess up. Games like this should only be played in full-screen.

Aside from that I love it. Sounds good, gameplay is intuitive, graphics are amazing (not sure if it was on purpose or not, but I love that the main duck is the same color as the ones from Nintendo's "Duck Hunt"... was he getting revenge?)

A video game giggle has never been done better than this. Great concept. The late game really reminded me of protecting that last city in Missile Command and feeling bad about letting everything else fall. Loved that game, thanks!

Fun little game! It's addictive once you've played!!
Very cute duckies and I like the gnomes! Well, I like them but still want to shoot them to protect the lovely ducklings!!!

Lovely. The idea is great and I really like the pixel art. Garden Gnomes??!! Lovely!!!

The art is really cute !
The game is simple but it works well, and is fun to play :)
The only problem i had is that aiming with the mouse but firing in 8 direction is counter-intuitive, but after a time you get used to that. Also, if you don't use the key "q" and "z", you can assign them to left and up, so that azerty keyboards don't have to change layout to play ;)

The game is really fun and addictive! Love the art, the ducks are so cute. The audio is really good too and I chuckled a little when I heard the 'he he he' from the gnomes XD.

The only problem I have with the game is when the chicks go off screen and I can't exactly protect them when the gnomes snatched them at the edge of the screen.

Besides that, the gameplay felt quite polished and it was really fun!

Highest score I could get 19500! :smile:

The art was super cute. I loved the little animations, the gnomes falling down, the little ducklings! You really made me care about my babies!

P.S. My take on the theme was quite similar to yours BUT in yours the pet(s) you need to protect move with you! :duck: which I like

I love this concept and the art!! That gun-wielding duck definitely needs more adventures after this. Turn it into a mascot and give it a series lol

sound gets boring and I think sometimes enemies collects chicks outside of the screen and disappears, not allowing that may be good since player had no change to prevent something outside of the screen

I love the death sound :laughing: It gets me every time - that inhuman 'EgHhhEGh'

I did encounter a couple of issues when playing, when my mouse went off screen or lost focus I on at least one occasion got stuck always walking down the screen which was really hard to counter and unlock. There was also some bouts of lag at times early to mid-game (of 2 minute games) which made it a little frustrating (I was wondering if cleanup code for bullets being off screen was working). The 8 way axis felt a little off when firing diagonally but I can't quite put my finger on way.

The graphics were great, the sad duck at the end with tears was sadly funny, and the chicks were super cute. The gnomes were amusing to see and their laugh made me smile.

:rofl: that looks SO cute :smile:

:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:

Wow, nice game! I only managed to rescue 13 ducks. Definitely hard. Maybe I really should have tried talking instead of violance.

edit: Decided to give it another go. 29700 score, I'm feeling proud! They didn't grow up to be Fortnite players, funny quotes!

omg the gnome sounds where demonic. i love it nice color palate too!

Holy moly, this game made me laugh out loud with how frantic it got. Was very proud with my 20400 highscore until I read the other comments here. Love the game!!

Very fun game.. Those little bast***s :D I just found it difficult to aim without a mouse and only the trackpad.. An alternative i was thinking of was making the gun shoot in the direction your duck is going? But lovely graphics, audio and lots of fun. Well done

Hahahah this is so funny and well done. The visuals are amazing, but the humour wins.

I had a great time on your game :)

sweet and funy

fun sounds and thought out gnome personality, hilarious how their mood change ;D

FYI I got stuck at a bug in the end when I didn't have anymore ducklings

Realy fun game but duck were wondering outside the screen. If you mange to repeair that then my wote would be solid 5 stars now it's just 4,5 :D good luck

God words cant describe how cute/fun this little game is.

I WANT ALL THE DUCKYS.
:duck: :baby_chick: :baby_chick: :baby_chick: :hatched_chick: :hatching_chick:

Really Fun Game to play! The Sound effects are great but often it gets a bit loud, Great Job

Any game that has me shouting "My ducklings!" at the screen us a winner. Going to go and kick one of my garden gnomes in the balls, though.

Fantastic work. Super fun idea, simple yet engaging gameplay that makes you want to keep trying again and again. The art and animations are also sublime. I was getting increasingly stressed as each of the little ducklings were being taken away and it broke my heart the first time I lost and saw the mother sit down and cry.... So i had to just try again!

If I could nitpick, I would say that I didn't really get "Keep it Alive" vibes while playing as there's no real explicit themes of life + death in this but more safety/protection/motherhood/hunting, but that may just be me being pedantic. Also really agree with what @shaolin-dave said about the mouse orientation. Really feel like this would have benefited from full 360 degree movement. Overall though, a fantastic entry. Really well done!

It was a bit fustrating that the ducks can run off screen but you cant shoot off screen. Also i would like to be able to shoot in all direction and not just the 8 current directions. But all in all a quite well made game. I got a fairly high score of 51500, but the game broke when i lost my last duck apparently.

Really nice game, very annoying ducks!

Edit: nevermind, managed to beat it :)

Haha that was amazing! A lot of fun and the game had a good difficulty curve. Sound effects were spot on, I wasn't sure if the sound that plays when a duckling gets snatched is the duckling chirping or a mischievous laughter of the gnomes, but I really liked that one :)

I really like ducks so of course I played xD Great art and sound design haha

That is some well made pixel art you got there, i especially enjoyed to gnome dying animation. I love the gameplay, though i am not a big fan of you only can shoot in 8 directions, but i guess that comes with the "90s arcade" feel. Great job, i managed to get 15000 before my ducklings died. I did have a bug in my first playthrough, where my duck just started walking right even though i didn't press d, so i had to counter it with pressing a all the time. Really nice game though, ESPECIALLY the graphics.

The sounds of the gnoms are just brilliant. Good job!

It was fun! The only things I'd change is the fact that you can't exactly fire at any angle and the ducks tends to go off-screen. Otherwise it was an enjoyable game!

Cute game, so annoyed with the gnomes :)

Doooohhh.... this is great! I've been seeing posts of the graphics (Twitter maybe?) and it is great to see it playable.
Some minor issues with bounding other peeps have mentioned and I ran out of ducks but didn't get the game over screen once... but whatever... this is amazing work for 72 hours. In love with the gnome art and run loop.
The slow mo grab on the last duck is just :two_hearts:

Thanks for all your valuable feedback. This is my first jam so it means a lot.
@shaolin-dave @dodormeur @kjscott @mathias-van-hooreweghe @conor-galvin @mads @batswinger
Regarding the 8-way shooting. You're right, it would definitely be better with full 360 aim. It was something we considered early on but concentrated on getting everything working first. We basically didn't have enough time to test our own game properly.

So, I actually tried changing it to 360 aim last night and it really changes the game, makes it so easy that it's no longer fun to play! With full 360, you end up just clicking on gnomes to kill them... 's no fun at all.
I've fixed the bug that allows chicks to walk out the screen though. 63200 appears to be the score to beat (how the hell did you manage _that?!_)

good job i really like it but i get the bug jaja

I'm guessing this is a controller game, the keyboard only responds to half of the input?

A fun and great looking game , good job :thumbsup:

Fun little game. Chaotic once you get a lot of gnomes on the screen. Good job. Thanks for the game.

Fun entry, I don't know if it was a bug but when I first lost all my chicks I was left to just wander around and shoot glitchy gnomes that appeared in the corners? At first I had the same complaint as others about 360 shooting but I agree with your comment above that it would be way too easy then and the restricted shooting mechanic has it's own charm. Still I would like to see some other mechanic to add another level of depth to the game and perhaps extend the replayability. Overall good entry and congrats on your first jam!

I love the death sounds!

Just like others, I would love to shoot at those vicious gnomes at 360°, to avenge my poor ducklings.

Other than that, all I can safely say is:
*Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeck!*

Wow! Really fun and adictive game! I loved the visuals and the sound, it seems a very polished game. I really enjoyed playing it! Congrats!

I really love the gnome voices, haha. Fun little arcade game~

@garys I can see that the 360 aiming would significantly alter the game. Did you upload the new version with no ducks outside the screen?

Edit: Yep i see you did :)

Had fun trying to defend those little cuties from being snatched, really well balanced too!
Didn't take too long for the amount of gnomes to build up, but wasn't too quick either. Solid game!

Simple but fun! Very detailed animations and good polish

The graphics are simple but super cool. The gameplay is fun, simple and easy to learn. Something to add variety to the game probably makes it better, but in the LD context this is very cool. Congratulations.

I love everything about this game! The art is freakin' adorable, the premise is unique and hilarious, and the sound is simple but still adds to the game.

I also really appreciate the flocking mechanics of the ducklings.

So prettyyyyyyy

It's fun ! Simple concept but it work ! Sometimes my duck move alone and stuck in a border, I don't know why. Well done !

Suck it dwarves!
Simple but fun, and I love the retro feeling with that music.!


Not a very high score but still a lot of dead dwarves :ok_hand:

Great polished little experience especially for the jam time available, i maxed out at about 1:30 each time! Your graphics are really clean and lovely looking, nice work!

That was a lot of fun. Nice to see Phaser in use! I ended up falling back to plain Pixi as I just didn't need anything else and I'm glad to see others not using Unity for simple games! Well done...

It's very fun! Nice graphic and sound but anyway a little beat sad, when every single ducklings has stolen

Cool little shooter. Pleasant pixel alt. Definitelly scores high for humor :)

Nice concept and gameplay and cute graphics. Some criticism here:
1. The game doesn't end when all ducklings are taken away (bug)
2. The bullet doesn't shoot in exact direction to mouse. It shoot a little side away. (Bug?)
2. Maybe it could be level/stage based? and amount of bullet could be limited? People could go to corner and spam bullets and get < 30,000 scores.

Great game, I have a new score to beat:
Around ~1.5 minutes into that particular run, my last two ducklings ended up in the top left corner of the screen. I also crammed myself into the corner and then the gnomes could no longer reach them (the gnomes seemed to just try to circle the player character, with several getting stuck at the screen's edge). I left it running in the background for quite a while to see if they would eventually get the ducklings, thus the high time relative to score. I decided to remove myself from the corner and let the run end shortly after the 30 minute mark.

Anecdotes aside, this game is a lot of fun to play. The simplicity of the mechanics makes it really accessible, and it feels super polished.

Really addicting. The game is accessible and fun to play. Graphics looked good. Overall a pretty good LD Game.

@stevenjmiller Squash one bug and create another! Up until yesterday, the ducklings could walk outside the screen. I fixed that, but now of course as you've found, you can game the system by blocking the path between them and the gnomes!
Ugh... I shall have to think about how to address that.

Those poor little ducks! Pretty funny game though, had a couple of bugs pop up like the end score page not triggering, and shooting could have been a bit easier to aim. But otherwise pretty polished and solid. Really liked the pixel art too!

@super-hadoken @garys Also a random question but what are you using to take such large & long gifs, while keeping the file size so low? Are you using something to optimize? Or is it just because of the limited colour palette that the file sizes are so low? Forever a struggle I have with ludum dare and its 4mb file size limit for gifs.

@alex-adedge I'm just using https://www.screentogif.com/
When exporting the gif, it has a default setting 'Detect unchanged pixels', so I suspect it's doing some work behind the scenes to keep fileszies down, and as you say, there's a limited colour palette... Gifs like large blocks of single colour pixels, so that's probably where all the savings are.

Very cure game. And addictive, I was really like 'no, no, motherfuckers, you won't take my little kids now!' haha

But I think it would've been nice to have more adventures for them after. Like if she had to bring them somewhere and fight different enemies or have some traps or something. But anw the game is very nice as it is as well!

@valisse21 Totally... if we'd have had more time... well... the original spec had a _lot_ of enemies and obstacles. ;)

@garys I understand, the same for our game. We wanted to make more levels, implement enemies etc but no time :(

Really fun and addictive ! I like the polish you added like the animation at the end and the different game over messages

Very good entry. The gnome and shooting sounds were a bit loud compared to the music but that was just something small I didn't really enjoy. It was easy to get a hang on and fun for multiple games although I have no idea how people got so high scores when I only managed to get to around 30k at best O.o

Cute game. The animation and sounds are pretty funny. It could use a power-up or two for variety. I ran into the "game not ending at 0 ducklings" bug you noted, and another: after the big gnome wave around 2 mins in, the gnomes only spawned one at a time (possibly because the gnome corpses from the wave never despawned).

I like the animations! Nice graphics. You need a few more sound FX for the enemies... shooting several in a row the sound becomes repetitive and somewhat disturbing! It would be nice to have an objective alongside protecting the babies, like an adventure or something. good game nonetheless!

I really liked the graphics on this one. The chicks were adorable and the duck, well.. I guess it's taking revenge on all the time it has been shotted in the old NIntendo gun game xD

Looked bland and then Bam .. Kept playing. Nice pallet and jus fun. Also stuck on screen edge occasionally but overall solid

hHaha, really like this one, very nice graphics and fits the theme, missed the music the first time so loaded back up to rate, and i had to play for another few minutes. Great sound as well, all round a good submission. ps liked the quote at the end

Cute game, only thing I would add is to have the projects follow the vector from your character to your mouse rather than fixed paths.

I ran into some of the bugs you've mentioned, couldn't shoot at the corner because of collision bug and when all my chicks were gone the game didn't end.

But I like the idea since I have made a similar game :) /machine-gun-chicken

It was fun, good job.

oh i made a 27k score :D really good idea, so clever and i laughed so hard at this game :D i feel like if you add enemy waves or a system like that instead of just increasing the number of gnomes in the screen in time, i might never want to quit the game :D

Enemy waves and/or levels were always the plan... alas, time was not our friend. ;)

The artwork is cute, well done and consistent! I really like to be finally the duck and not the hunter! I really enjoyed playing your game!

I lasted 2 minutes, but for some reason I didn't get an end screen, I just lost all the chicken and the gnomes stopped coming, but overall a fun game, great job!

Great game)

Nice looking game. Wish there were some upgrades to shoot faster etc

This is fantastic! Gameplay and graphics are very well. Some times there are some bugs. One example is that some time also if you have no more chicks the game doesn't finish.

Why are the gnomes such jerks? What did the baby ducks ever do to them. (I really liked the game btw.) Also when there were no more babies, the game didn't end, and the bullets are sideways when you shoot up. But cool game.

When I was playing with an Xbox One gamepad sometimes the movement would work but I couldn't fire any bullets (btw it's a fun game).

@odd1in Yeah, that's a weird bug I've seen happen a few times... if you refresh the page, most of the time it'll start working... the game is designed for pad first, but sometimes the browser doesn't give it access.

Great game! I'm always in if a game has ducks in it, heh. Fun game and easily understandable mechanic. Aiming was a bit odd as it only shoot in eight directions but aiming was with the mouse, so I thought the bullets would go that direction. Graphics are simply fantastic and I really felt sorry when I lost and saw the duck crying, hah. Music and sfx were great too.

I didn't have any collision issues as far as I know.

Managed to survive ~1:40. Simple idea but well executed! Having a brood to look after really mixes things up, so good work on keeping it fresh!

I didn't quite like the 8 directional aiming as it felt a bit off when using a mouse, it felt like a lack the precision. However I do understand the retro theme and how 8 directional aim fits in, its just more a personal preference.

Despite my picky gripe, I really enjoyed playing this game! A very solid entry, awesome work! :smile:

Had so much fun! Excellent controls and gameplay. I only wished that it had more than 8 direction to shoot. Nevertheless it is a great. Great job.

Very coherent "universe", graphically and musically. Basic gameplay but that works.

For your information, I had trouble playing with my controller (PS4 on ubuntu), the right stick didn't work. I think the axis were kind of merged with L2 analog trigger.

@chuchuw Thanks for the report! I don't have a PS4 stick, or indeed an Ubuntu box to test on, but I'll see what I can figure out.

Good graphics and audio! The game was fun, simple, and intuitive! Too bad you could not made more enemy characters. Something went wrong on the HTML5(web) the time survived text went all crazy:
Over all great game. keep it up!

Fun game! I appreciate the idea, good graphics and mood.
My record 1:36 :)

Well done! Simple yet enjoyable game!

(Felt a bit sad at times when the ducklings are getting to close to the edge of the screen, being stolen away easily, but that's my fault, I guess)

Great game graphics and audio are great mouse controlls feels a little off and the difficulty after some point you cant shoot fast that the enemys spawn so you lose :cry: haha

Loved the graphics. My poor chicks all got captured. :(

It was a good game, but it felt too quick and boring. It can use a lot of enemy spawn improvement.

Fantastic entry. I absolutely loved the art, and the humor was on point too. The game play was simple but really solidly well done. Great job. :)

Very fun little game and well polished. The death sound of dwarves are so strange ahah

Super simple. Gameplay was solid. I'm playing on keyboard and the 8-directional shooting is really weird. Kinda understandable considering its targeted for controller. The audio was really annoying and repetitive to be honest. Also, I don't think there was much thought put into balance as it quickly gets to the point where you simply can't shoot fast enough for the amount of enemies being spawned. Gnomes would spawn right next to the ducklings and pretty much instantly take them away. Some padding on the edges of the screen would help a lot.

This was really charming! The premise and gameplay are super simple, but the theme is well integratd. The art and sound are super cute, even stuff like the UI. Very polished! Nice job

Very enjoyable! Definitely one of the top games I have enjoyed playing this LD. Don't really have anything to add to what have been said before. The only thing I feel that would need a change is the direction in which you fire should not be forced

I love your art style! The only problem is it's a little slow on my computer, but as it's 13 years old, I'm not surprised. Good job!

Really solid play loop. It's interesting in that player motion has ramifications on the positioning of the "cluster" you are guarding.
At first I thought my shots threatened the ducklings too, and it felt WAY more stressful lol.

Nice entry! I found that my flock tended to stick to the side, which made things harder. Maybe this was my fault. I felt the firing snapping to fixed angles was difficult for me, but I don't have good suggestions about how I would change it given the pixel art style.

Solid game! I had a lot of fun playing this. The ducklings are super cute and gnome are hilarious. Good job!

Simple but solid entry, I enjoyed playing it! Graphics and music are polished and pleasant.

Super cool and fun entry! Love the graphics and the way you linked it to the theme. Super clean animations and nice Ai and everything! Great Job

The pixel art was gorgeous. First and foremost. The audio for the knomes was nice and so was the music. The ducklings looked adorable btw. I was using a mouse for aiming and it did feel a little inconsistent at times. Maybe you could have another control scheme where you're moving with WASD and shooting with the arrow keys. Also, the number of knomes on screen gets a little too crazy to the point where I can't even see the ducklings which are left. I realise that it was done to make the game harder or more challenging, but when I can't even see what I'm protecting, it gets a little frustrating. Still, this was an awesome entry. Good job :)

Seen this game a bit on the blogs, but only just got around to playing it. Well, I'm glad I did! It was really fun! The game is a good jam game that felt polished and smooth. The graphics and audio sync well (in terms of their 8-Bit style which I know you were going for) as does the gameplay. When I started playing, I thought the aim was tied to the direction of movement but quickly realised the 8 directional aiming (which also goes well with the 8-Bit theme). Really enjoyed playing it and I had fun! All elements of the game (especially the mechanics) tied well and worked together to deliver a consistently 8-Bit experience that was enjoyable to play. However, I noticed you look in 8 directions for aiming while stationary, but found it confusing when this reduced to 4 directions while moving. This might be an improvement to keep things consistent. Overall, well done and a truly great job!

Challenging 8 directional shooting, but fun! Nice retro art and sfx. Simple and easy to pick up. Good jam!

The death sound effect gets a bit annoying after a while, other than that it's a great entry. Love the art and animation :)

I like the humor and the art. Interesting take that the ducklings follow you around. Sound gets repetetive quickly though ;)

Aww what a sweet and solid entry! It was minimalsitic but what was ther was perfect1 The graphics wer aweome and sweet (broke my heart in the end tbh :'( )
ontrols were solid, and I LOVE controller support! Most games should have controller support (obviously there's exceptions, but y'know)
I really loved the random ending messaged, made me laugh.
Good job you two!

lovely game, the gnome death animation is perfect! great work

Great game, way more intense than the graphics lead on <3 I screamin at about MAH DUCKLINS lol

lemme shoot with the aaaaaarrrows ! lol it's really fun

Very awesome game!


The only thing I can think of as an improvement is a bit more atmosphere and story.

Interesting and cute game. Liked the graphics a lot, idea is very funny.

I'll get those goddam gnomes someday!

I just finished with a score of 37000 which is pretty normal. This is a really fun and relaxing (relaxing?!) game!
I love the 8-bit retro feel of that game, in the graphics and the audio, which are awesome btw.


Good job!

Very nice for a simple for what it does. Love the art.

Will definitely benefit from additional variety if you plan to expand after Ludum :smile:

Well done!

I tried with Xbox 360 and Xbox One gamepads on Mac: left stick works, right stick works sometimes and RT never works.

@juice-lizard I've only been able to test with a 360 pad on Windows, but it's working perfectly for me... We're using the gamepad api in the browser, so there's only so much we can do... what browser are you using? Any chance you could try with a different one?

@garys I tried with Firefox first. Then I tried with Safari: it is worst, the game just doesn't lauch and stay black.

Fun game, little frustrating the ducks can go off map. The repetitiveness of the gnomes was a little much also. But the game play was good and it was hard enough you had to panic to win.

I was originally sold on the name, but the game is great too! The animations are nice and the way the little chicks flock feels great. I'm not a huge fan of the death sound for the gnomes, but I absolutely love the 'HeHeHEE' they make when they steal the chicks. Many games would have take the easy option and just had the chicks disappear or die, so I like the fact you went to the effort to make the gnomes pick them up and run off with them. I think it added an extra element to the gameplay. As soon as I heard that hehehe I'd panic and desperately try find my chick - Great job! I'd love to see some extra weapons. I think the rate at which the gnomes spawn later on overwhelmed me too much, but if I managed to get better weapons I'd have kept up fine. Minor issues aside this is a fantastic game, well done!

Nice little game, I like the graphics and the sounds. It's fun to try to keep all this little chickens alive !

It will be nice to shot at 360°. Your pixel art is very cute and the gameplay is fun good job !

f***ing hate gnomes

Really nice entry team ! what else could we add you got the idea and you did it well. Keep it up !

Your game made me feel "Keep it Alife!!!" LOL Great work!

Cute take on the theme, love the overall and especially the title :D

Awesome game. I love the sound and graphics. The controls are pretty nice, but the 8d aiming can be annoying at times. Overall, really cool game. One of my favourites so far. Good work!

The idea is crazy. I love crazy ideas. And that's why I love this game!

The animations are adorable, the sound effects are funny, the gameplay fits the theme perfectly. Kudos!

So much fun. I got 34,200 for my high score. I love the art and the dying gnomes are amazing!

Great little game with plenty of polish!

The graphics are spot on, nice color palette and lovely touches with idle animations on the ducklings in both the menu and the game. There were also some really neat touches to the gameplay, especially the physics interactions of being able to push around gnomes and ducklings. Escaping gnomes speeding up when you hit them is a great little balancing feature that a lot of people might not have considered including. I also love that my highscores appear on the menu after the game.

It would be great to see some more eveny types in the game, but hey, that's the curse of such a heavy time pressure. Thanks for the game!

Animations, colors, humour... everything is so well callibrated ! The game is much fun, congratulations for that !

This was great! I really liked this game :)

Great game. Loved it and you've got some dead dwarves to clean.

Quite charming art and sounds and concept.
My only real complaint is the controls, just not being to aim 360 degrees whilst still using the mouse feels real awkward. Either aiming using the keys (WASD move, arroys aim) or having 360 aim, either would feel significantly better, even if the sprite doesn't quite line up. But pointing at the thing and shooting somewhere else, it doesn't feel right.
Other than that, I have a cruel urge to suggest that you can shoot the ducks by accident, though perhaps spattered duckling wouldn't suit the cutsie artstyle (perhaps it just stuns them or something.)

Cool! But I wanna shot the duck... they move around instead of following me :( they get kidnapped so easily. Great Game!

Enjoyed this a lot. Graphics were cute and the sound of the gnomes just made it. At first I thought they were cute, and after hearing the sound I was like "they're not getting my ducklings those bastards". The number of gnomes that came at you were scaled great as you got the chance to figure out what was going on before everything went crazy.

That's some good shit right there. Really like how you took the time to put up the stats at the end. shooting felt a little bit slow especially towards the end there but all in all was fun.

Hilarious game! Really liked the gameplay, very fun game! One time my duck sort of kept getting pulled to the right side of the screen, went away though and not a massive issue! Overall, this was a great jam entry!

"Inexplicably angry gnomes." AND SO MANY OF THEM. That description had me chuckling before the game even started.

However, the Axis aiming was super weird and often inconvenient. Having to move around with the keyboard while simultaneously aiming with the mouse, and then the gnome it just every so slightly out of your range. It was a bit frustrating, and I'm sure there's a way to keep it challenging without handicapping the player to such an extent. Those gnomes are fast enough, and the ducklings are helpless enough that it's all guaranteed to be a cluster-duck anyway (sorry, not sorry). :duck:

That said, it was very fun to play and overall I thought you guys did a great job!

Fun game. I really love the art. I found the shooting a bit annoying sometimes due to being locked to 8 directions, but I do understand the reasoning behind it.

Great game! Having read every comment, I think that the 8-directional shooting is a must, to prevent the player from staying at the center of the room just clicking over gnomes. That being said, the only improvement I can think of is a way to make the difficulty increasing in a more smooth way. Right now the game is very easy at first, but then it gets really hard. I believe that the main reason is that gnomes lift the ducks, but when they die the ducks stay in the upper part. Maybe putting ducks back at the real floor level would prevent them from scattering so fast, and help the players to learn and acquire ability.

Awesome game. Really like how old duck shooting game paying dwarfs back.

The art and audio are super cute!
I read your message about 360 vs 8-way aiming. That's a tough one. Certainly the game would be too easy if you just add 360 aiming, but the 8-way limitation doesn't seem to be a fun kind of difficulty. I think you would need to find some additional mechanic to add difficulty to the game unrelated to the aiming.
Like having different bullet types to switch between for different enemies.

Hahah! Nice game i really liked it! :D

Absolutely great entry! I liked the gameplay dynamics, and your pixel art was really nice. You even managed to do a crying animation - that made me real sad in the end.

Details wise, controls and shooting were solid, and I wasn't upset much by 8-way shooting at first. Duckling herd behaviour was a nice chaotic touch too - although sometimes irrritating, as for me they seem to heavily prefer drifting towards a top left corner, where I couldn't defend them.

There's good difficulty and bad difficulty; limiting player controls is usually perceived as bad. Even more so when it is combined with game behaviours like aforementioned one: I need to move around -> sometimes to left and top -> that causes ducklings to go more and more upward and to the left -> I need to move more -> they end up in the corner -> I lose -> I feel cheated / punished.
This could be learned and compensated, of course, but this exact feature didn't feel much fun to learn - good sign of a bad difficulty.

I'd recommend you to enable 360 aim, and then try and make your game hard without limiting the player, or with doing that in such a way that the limit is perceived as a consequence of his/her own actions. This is hard to pull off, but is much more rewarding.
If you insist on keeping the retro feel, though (and I understand why you'd want to do that), you might need some kind of solution for herd control.

Sorry for the rant (but you signed for it, no refunds). If that wasn't obvious, I really liked your game =)

I love this type of game! and think it's better playing in coop! The only thing i recommend is add more challange, something like, your bullets go over and you have to pick up more, then you need to keep moving etc . Just an example, but great job!

A well executed, concise idea with great audio and visuals. Great submission!

Other than weirdness at the edges of the screen, which is a known issue, I had some trouble with gamepad input. 90% of the time the bullets would shoot in the direction I was pointing, except after I had been holding down fire for a while (> 20 sec) it would get stuck firing in a set direction and would not change direction until I released the trigger and started firing again.

That minor annoyance aside it's a great game and a really solid jam entry. GG!

edit: Playing with an official microsoft xbox controller

I loved the humour of your game and the hilarious gnome sounds. All things considered, in the end I was glad the ducklings didn't make it ;)
What bothered me a bit is that when there are a lot of gnomes on screen, it is very hard to visually distinguish the ones that have just snatched a duckling from the other gnomes. I often ended up not knowing where my children had been taken to. Furthermore, an aim indicator would have been nice. 8-direction aim with the mouse is a but unintuitive, and I could have used some kind of feedback if I'm going to fire in the direction I intend to.
Nice graphics and soundtrack add to this being a great entry. Congratulations!

1:04 !!! Those pixel art makes me go YES! I loved the sound the gnomes make when they die! That's so funny!!! :laughing: The 8 direction shooting made the the game even more challenging!
Greato Jobu! :smile:

Hahaha, this is such a fun game. The art and audio is fantastic and the amount of gnomes you end up getting on the screen after about a minute is hilarious with all the angry grunts and laughter going on at once. Nice job!

That was hilarious! I eventually died due to the unending wall of gnomes. I couldn't kill enough of them! I see on the bug list that there are some collision issues on right side of screen, I think I may have gotten stuck on the left wall in those last few moments though. Great game!

Congrats for the entry, very simple and attractive! Love everything about the gnomes haha.

Justly fit game! Every category was pretty much filled out for me! Well done!

Even though it was short and repetitive over time, it was fun and enjoyable. "Hehehe" *BLERGGH!* :joy:


The game never launch for me it's the second time I'm trying to play :/

I loved how intuitive the gameplay was. The gameplay was very fun, and the art of the game was great too. I really enjoyed the game. My highest score was 02:42.

The only issue I had with the game was, that with the "8 way shooting" it was very hard to hit the enemies when there were a lot of them.

But overall the game was very good.

Damn gnomes! Mah lil babies!

Fun little game :) - pretty intuitive and quick.
A few extras in the gameplay (bombs? turrets? other protection?) would have been cool. :)
Also, there is a bit of a sad feeling that inevitably every time you lose all your ducklings, on the reward side having a mechanic to save a few, somehow, can fix that :D

Nicely done~

For the Sake of Ducks. very nice Game. gameplay feels Nice. Maybe Adding any type of powerup will make it more fun to play. but overall well done.


you must have had fun recording the sound effects. i'm pretty proud of my result. super funny little game. congratulations.

Great work only thing is why 8 direction shooting, it needs more accurate shooting to mouse pointer position.

the game ran the first time but crashed after 1 second. now it just stay a gray screen and doesn't load

ok I changed my browser from chrome to chromium and it works now. I like it. pretty fun to shoot gnomes thats for sure :P

it looked very polished and it handled well.

Holy shit that's awesome!

fun to play

Really fun game! The art was great and the concept worked really well with the theme. My only critique is that I think upgrading the 8-directional shooting to something smoother would do your game justice. Overall, still a great game!

A few bugs:

- Arrow key aiming didn't seem to work at all for me, pressing any arrow key seemed to cause the duck to aim to the right.
- Plugging in a gamepad seems to make the game hang; in fact starting the game with a gamepad connected seems to result in the music playing but only a gray screen being displayed.

I'm running Chrome 81.0.4044.129 on Windows Server 2016, if that helps with a repro!

Anyhow, I ended up having to use the mouse to aim. I didn't have any issue with the 8-way aiming. It does feel a bit..."weird" having 8-directional aim with a mouse -- it'd probably feel much more natural with twin stick or keyboard (or the classic robotron dual arcade stick setup....).

Not much else to say here, it's cute and simple but enjoyable for what it is. The one thing that was kind of weird for me was the chick following behavior. I get that the chickies try to move towards the player, but as the player you're incentivized to move closer to the chickies since there's less bullet travel distance that way. Also, the gnomes end up moving the chickies towards the edges of the screen. All of these factors combined mean that I just ended up having the whole group of chicks move gradually towards the edge of the screen, which doesn't work out so well... Feels like a problem that could be easily solved though!

We also made a game about saving chickies by the way! Feel free to try it out :)

It's really cute!

Very funny and I loved the music. Reminded me of Sonic 2 for the Sega Game Gear for some reason.

Hi glad to see you got a lot of people playing your game. Good to get positive feedback. I like the game , nice concept and I think nailed the theme. Is it just me or other people are also finding gnome dying voice a bit irritating haha. Shooting aim takes a bit of practice. Overall good game and great to see you still have it in you to go back and fix the bugs. I don't feel like touching mine after 3 days of intensely looking at same screen :)

What a fun little game. The difficulty ramped up quite fast and I lost because so many gnomes threw themselves into the way of the one gnome stealing my last chick. Who knew gnomes were such matyrs...

All joking aside this is a super solid jam entry that looks and feels very polished. Really well done!

This was super fun and challenging. One of my favorite games so far :)
It left me wanting for me, like upgrades!

Very fun game! I got 18,700. The simplicity is very nice. It might be nice to see some slight variations in the grass/ground cover. The concept is simple, and I really enjoyed it.

Very nice and well made arcade game! I got 19200:)

Great aesthetics and audio. The only thing I would say is that it would be nice if the player could rotate freely 360 degrees, although I understand if that would be technically difficult.

Overall, well done!!

It's a very solid game! Good job!
The end (~18k points) tends to get a little crazy and my rate of fire can't keep up with the gnomes :joy:

Awesome fun :D loved the duck puns and good work on the post-jam fixes really finished the game off nicely! Great work!

This one made me chuckle! Excellent art and sounds. I wish there were weapon upgrades as you progress but I had fun regardless. Nice job!

Nice!!!

Cute and fun little game, good animations, good music, good sound effects, and hilarious game over screens. Great job!

Very fun, addicting and impressive game!

Everything is good, graphics, animations, sounds, music, gameplay...

Nice work, I liked it too much!

Amazing job ! It's the first game of the LD built with phaser 3. I wanted to try this library one day, is there a plateform where I can see your source code ? It's pretty hard to find good example built with phaser 3.

Fun game and I enjoyed it. Reminded me of Rip-Off from Cinematronics in the early 80s (earliest game with this design?). Nice job. Was really fun with a controller.

Loved the game! Had lots of fun playing it. I got till 1 minute 35 seconds (too tough for me to get it past 2:00) also your spelling of 'HELP' is wrong, it is spelled 'HALP' instead of 'HELP' in the menu. Otherwise found no bugs or glitches. Awesome sound and gameplay. Why are there so many gnomes trying to take my ducklings though?? I hate the angry gnomes (:angry :) :angry:

I liked the game, it was intense and fun. One note about the 8 way aim, I understand the retro aspect but maybe it would be better if the shots went in the direction in which the mom duck is facing (ie currently moving or previous direction). We cant see the mouse cursor and that makes it very weird in terms of aiming

That was intense! :smiley: Loved the art and animations. Great job with keeping the pixel art tidy and polished. Really loved the duck animations!

Would've been cool to have some upgrades for the duck, and/or make it a moving mission, where you need to get your ducklings to safe pond.

Very fun gameplay and nice simple art! The animations were good and the sounds made me giggle. The only thing I didn't like about the gameplay was that your ducklings could almost disappear off the screen by being pushed by gnomes or the character and when they were so close to edge it was almost impossible to rescue them!

Great work - very nicely polished. Loved the gnomes and the ducks - the gnomes look so happy when they manage to grab a little duckling!

Some more gameplay would've been nice, but nevertheless very good for the tight deadline.

Hey, thanks for posting the game to my stream!

Nice retro game feel with 8-directional controls, kinda chiptune style music, and funky pixel art.
What in the world makes those gnomes so very happy when stealing a duckling though, that smile. That. Smile.

I like this game! Just wish the herd of ducklings would be a bit more predictable xD Here's my playthrough of it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/617105092

That's a simplistic, gorgeous and polished game. Really good stuff.
I love the graphics, the simplistic mechanic works! I just would add something else to make it even more pleasant to kill them o/
Great submission!

I played it again I think it was worse in the score, and I would like it to shoot the duck a little more hahaha

Neat game, the behavior of the angry gnomes was really fun to look at

Everything is well polished, and it's pleasing for the experience, it is fun

Well done!

The art was well executed, the look was cohesive and it felt like a complete package. The sound was good, I think it could have benefited from a little bit of randomized pitch shifting or rate limiting, as it got a little noisy as the rate of enemies being killed increased. Overall: Nicely done!

I saw a lot of humor :smirk:

Wow, great job :duck:

The pixel art is very very good. The sounds are also spot on, they are quite funny and they give a great audio feedback. All hitboxes (bullets and gnomes) are big and convenient.

The game concept is simple and to the point, which let you polish a lot of small aspects and get to this great game feel. Great job on not falling into the classic trap of wanting to add other mechanics or enemies or anything.

I loved the erratic movement of the ducklings. This gives a great "living" feelings, and is not too random so it still does not feel like you can lose by bad luck.

On my crappy computer, the game started lagging when around 2 minutes when the screen was full of gnomes yelling HIHIHI.

Thanks for the game, and again, good job!

The different messages on the loading screen are hilarious - loved that! Audio (both music and sfx) is very fitting to the game and compliments the graphics and the general mood nicely.

I saw a strange bug on my second try with a gnome seemingly just floating away slowly with my duckling. He was invulnerable and just floooooating. I'm not sure if I actually shot him earlier and that was just a visual bug, or he was actually the legendary Invincible Gnome Thief - the bane of ducks everywhere :wink:

Great job on the game! A smooth and fun experience!


Loved your fluid animation and humor. The Gnome laugh cracked me up a lot! i would have liked a true 360 degree shooting but this way it was more challenging.

Nice game! The animations looked super nice! Great effort on sfx, too. Gameplay is very simple but fun, some more mechanics (other enemies, weapons, maps) could be welcome. But already looking pretty good, congrats! :)

Cool game! I really like the graphics and the music!