Tiny Ducks by osh.studio
Tiny Ducks: A Crusty Crusade
Pixel Art Deck Building Roguelike (with ducks)
Life as a tiny duck in Honkville was as good as it gets; paddling with the flock, talking quack, and getting that daily bread. But everything changed the day the Evil King invaded, not only stealing The Sacred Crust, but also cruelly bedecking himself in a duck feather coat and beak sword.
But fear not, three tiny yet plucky ducks have come forward to represent Honkville in feathered formation, and the squadron has vowed to conquer the Evil King, and get back The Sacred Crust.
Controls
Use a mouse to select cards to attack enemies and defend your tiny ducks.
How to Play
Defeat enemies for 7 rounds to lead you to the king, and conquer the Evil King to win back The Sacred Crust and restore peace to Honkville.
Each turn, use your available Manna (top left corner) to purchase cards from your deck to defend or attack. Read carefully, some cards can only be used with certain ducks, and some have consequences! Once you’ve used up all your Manna, end your turn (top middle), to allow the enemy to retaliate. The health and attack strength of the enemy are shown in the circles above him. Your deck has 10 cards to start (bottom left corner), and for each successful defeat of an enemy, you can select an additional card to add to the deck.
Dev Thoughts
Created in partnership with my longtime friend and workmate Gabby, was fun, am tired. We learned we don’t want to make a card game ever again (:
Dev Changelog
Fixed bug where disabled cards dont re-enable on revive
| Link | https://oshstudio.itch.io/tiny-ducks |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-ducks |
Ratings
| Overall | 19th | 4.337⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 33th | 4.202⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 517th | 3.337⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 456th | 3.788⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 85th | 4.443⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 91th | 3.942⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 85th | 4.183⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 39🗳️ | 54🗨️ |
Some card stay unplayable even if your duck revive or in between runs..
I got to level 8, but lost by one because I could not play the shiv... I am too lazy to replay it now, but I might give it another go later on!
I wish you could right-click on attack cards to fast-attack without having to pick the target (since there is only ever one).
I'm glad the ducks have their bread now, but it was quacking hard to kill that king, it took 4 generations of ducks for me! A ducking fun deck builder! Quackingly good one I'd say!
I'd love to see this continued to be developed and have it so you can customise your starting ducks and their classes. This game is honestly just superb!
The good:
- The artwork was awesome!
- The visual indications were really well done. After I figured out what the circle was all about pretty much everything was super easy to read
- The music and sound effects were also very good
- Everything stayed really on brand! it felt like a really cohesive package
- I felt the game balance was also really good. I won my first round, but it was really close. I appreciated the slice and dice style of letting your downed teammates come back after each round
Things that could be improved on:
- This is a bit nit picky for a 72 hour project, but the game feels a little stiff. Everything is moving in straight lines and on static movement curves. Would be nice to have a little more life to it
- I wish there was an ability to skip adding a card. Definitely had a couple choices where I would have just preferred nothing.
- Another nit-picky one: I didnt feel like I really understood what was in my deck. Maybe I just missed it, but every turn I just kinda played whatever was best and for card pickup it was the same. Would have been nice to have a bit more of a general idea of what I was working with to synergize more, but like i said that is really asking a lot of a 72 hour game
Best game I have played so far. Friend was watching and said "wait this was a game jam game? this is dope as hell"
Reminds me a lot of slay the spire (which I assume was the inspiration), but it felt different enough to stand out on its own.
The strategy was a lot of fun, great to try and maximise a run, with all sorts of different builds.
Really liked the way each character had a different role you had to mix and match with taking damage vs the cards you use. Honestly I could see the game expanded upon into something more.
I quacked up at the lil tombstone moving into the next room hehehe >:)
The slay the spire influence is clear like others pointed out, but I like the twist that you control multiple d00ds while the enemy only has 1 you gotta worry about
Thanks for making characters revive between rooms, otherwise I probably wouldn't have beaten the game on my first try.
The graphics are very good, I liked the art slightly leaving the frame of the cards like the Fireball one.
PS: I played two runs. Funnily I got multiple Heal cards during the second run, but I never saw any on the first one - I even thought about asking why there was no way to heal 😅
This was a ton of fun - My playthrough was super tense the entire way through, because I didn't realize your ducks could be revived. All three of my ducks were at less than 5hp going into the final boss, and there were several tense coin flips on Duck cards keeping them afloat. Honestly I'm kind of glad to have had that experience because it was a blast trying to manage everyone's health and keep them alive just long enough to crawl across the finish line.
I know y'all don't plan to expand this game because you never want to make a card game again, but if you do ever pick it back up, I'd highly recommend incentivizing a no-revives run - The cards that you have here made resource management super tight but doable, and before I read the comments and saw that you could revive your ducks, I was floored by how well you had nailed that balance in 72 hours. Either way, awesome job!
Certainly, some quality of life changes could improve the experience, but seeing as you mentioned you don't want to work on a card game ever again 💀, this is already really really good. I especially liked the VFX and the art, both were gorgeous.
Amazing job!
https://www.youtube.com/live/dLPX-A6bkOM?t=1605
Also Wanted to ask if youre fine with me using gameplay from the game in this LDs [score chasers tournament](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/$405421/ludum-dare-score-chasers-qualification-begins) intermission video. (Would play in the breaks of the tournament on my stream). Last year for reference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuddhZScWxo
You did a great job!
I liked the graphics and the music.
I didn't get very far because I'm not very good at strategy, but it was a fun game.
It made me want to eat bread.
Congratulations!
Great work, y'all!
Very cute! Duck the evil queen!
Other than that, a very nice spire-like :)