A Pac-Man / Roguelite Hybrid That Never Quite Combines
If Ball x Pit can turn Arkanoid into a roguelite, then why can’t the same be done to Pac-Man? You can’t fault the logic. The result is Dungeons and Ducklings, which subs-off the hungry yellow ball for a duck and its ducklings.
Dungeons and Ducklings makes some changes to fit the roguelite formula. Pac-Man’s discrete, screen-wide levels have been stretched out to make a never-ending grid. The duck can keep moving up without having to stop, although moving down is inadvisable as there’s a black ooze that will kill it. The ability to pop off one side of the screen and appear on the other has been replaced by Mario-like warp pipes.
As a wee nod to the classic, there are ghosts, but there are also skeletons, bats, treasure-gnomes and minotaurs. They all hunt for Pac-Ma…sorry, the duck…in different ways. Some hunt it relentlessly, others fire projectiles, while a few follow patrol routes. Learning which is which is the roguelite way: it’s fine if you get caught out by a new enemy, as there’s always a subsequent run to benefit from that new knowledge.
Zero Ducks Given
Your duck isn’t defenceless. Collect coins in the dungeon and your attack bar fills up, to the point that an Attack is readied. Depending on your equipped weapon, you can swipe with a sword, let loose homing-missile-like magic, or unleash whirlwinds. Enemies are killed, combos increase, and the coins you collect get multiplied as a result. It’s a little more versatile than power pills.
There’s another bar that you’ll want to keep an eye on. The boss bar fills up as you make progress and, once complete, a boss wanders in. They take several hits to kill and have a frustrating ability to make themselves invulnerable after a hit (duck-you, Trey, the second boss), so you’re swooping into hazardous areas and unleashing an attack in the hope of carving one more chunk from their health bar.
If the bosses or any other enemy hit you, then you’re losing one of your accompanying ducklings. These little chaps are collected in the dungeon, and they have multiple uses. As mentioned, they are your health: if you lose all of them and get hit, then your run is done. But you can cash them in at portals for an upgrade (simultaneously sending them back to the hub where they can have a wee rest), or you can use them as weapons. Upgrades and purchases make them into tesla coils or sickle-throwers.
Would You Trust A Cat With Ducklings?
Finally, after a run is over, you can pay a visit to a cat vendor to buy some permanent upgrades. The coins you snaffled can be turned into cosmetics, stat-boosts like speed and luck, trinkets, rings, weapons and capes. If you want to be making profitable runs then we’d recommend parking the cosmetic hats for a moment and instead investing in health, attack, luck and weapon improvements.
Writing it all down, Dungeons and Ducklings sounds so, so good. It feels like a fully featured and clever expansion on the ol’ pill popper. But for a multitude of reasons, I can’t bring myself to play one more game. It’s a roguelite hybrid that never properly comes together.
A Mix That’s Mallard To Like
I have to pin a lot of the fault on the roguelite half. While there is a little randomness in each run – the backgrounds change, and you can’t predict the exact layout – each runthrough has effectively the same structure. Level 1 always has the same cast of enemies and culminates in the same boss, and so on for Level 2, 3 etc. And there aren’t many surprises. There’s no room for randomised bosses, secret rooms or events.
What this all means is that each run plays out like an echo of the last. That’s most problematic when you’ve played a dozen runs or so. The first level and boss may not be a challenge anymore thanks to upgrades, but it’s still time-consuming. You have to wade through the old stuff to get to the new, and Dungeons and Ducklings can’t come up with a way to soften the boredom.
There are odd design decisions that keep getting in the way, too. Attacking enemies, for example, only became enjoyable after about eight hours of play. No matter the weapon, your duck struggles to have any control over the attack. Want to hit a wall to gain a lore book? Only swords can do that with any kind of regularity. Want to blast a fast-approaching enemy? You’ll have to wait for a too-long animation to play, and there’s no guarantee that the homing weapon will attack the enemy you want. It’s all so inelegant and imprecise.
A Few Cracked Eggs On The Way To An Omelette
The list of weirdnesses goes on. There are paths that are too small for the duck to fit down, which made us wonder why they were included at all. Other paths are a pixel or two askew from the paths that join it, like an unwanted chicane. It’s often better to equip no trinkets, rings or cloak, so you can guarantee that the perks focus on what matters: the weapons. Dungeons and Ducklings would have hugely benefited from a Hades-style choice of three when it came to perks, as you can often win stuff that is worse than the duckling you traded in to get it.
Gah, there’s a cracking game here, hidden beneath the repetitive runs and curious design choices. We kept hoping that it would emerge. We can squint and imagine it, with varied runs, choices for upgrades, and the ability to unlock and skip levels you don’t like. It’s a flipper or two away from greatness.
But for now, Dungeons and Ducklings feels like a proof of concept. We can see how a Pac-Man homage and roguelite could combine. But this isn’t the game to do it. With some more thought in how the roguelite additions intertwine, Dungeons and Ducklings 2 could be killer.
Important Links
Mama Duck Needs You – Dungeons and Ducklings is a New Roguelite Adventure – https://www.thexboxhub.com/mama-duck-needs-you-dungeons-and-ducklings-is-a-new-roguelite-adventure/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/dungeons-and-ducklings/9NZS6ZZS02NC/0010
