super-dario 2026-04-21 10:43
Cute game and love the fact you got your kids involved (gave a 5 star for Audio!)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Mama Duck Hero
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 742 | 3.00 | 27 | |
| Fun | 700 | 2.88 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 668 | 2.94 | 27 | |
| Theme | 664 | 3.18 | 27 | |
| Graphics | 717 | 2.86 | 27 | |
| Audio | 331 | 3.52 | 27 | |
| Humor | 157 | 3.64 | 26 | |
| Mood | 628 | 3.27 | 26 |
Cute game and love the fact you got your kids involved (gave a 5 star for Audio!)
Overall is cute, I think more indications would be nice, and improve the movement of mama duck (it's like driving a car hahaha, maybe it's intentional?)
*quack*
The theme interpretation is accurate, the conceptual design is eye-catching, and the art style is highly recognizable. Five-star praise! Looking forward to playing with your work, thank you for your support!
Nice concept with the mama duck and her ducklings, love that you got your family involved as well!! Tank controls were a bit tough for me in this context. I also didn't expect pools of red for my little duckies T.T
Such a heartwarming theme! I honestly never would have thought of taking it in this direction. What a brilliant idea!
Interesting artistic style!
i love idea but for me controls were a little bit confusing and i needed time to get used to it. Great interpretation of the theme here
听人说这种前进方式叫作坦克操作？？好有意思！ 等我意识到红色的圈=孩子尸体的时候已经来不及了。。。 小鸭子会长大这一点有种战略经营游戏的感觉非常喜欢 居然还有真人配音辛苦了！音量很大很喜欢
idk why but it feels to me like a great web-horror game. 10/10. feed me mom
Great horror-game. I fed them all.
Honestly, this voice acting and the cover art drawn in Paint brought tears to my eyes. It’s a truly valuable and heartfelt project. 5 stars across the board!
Holy duck, game is so cute, with those art and voiceover, but then comes bloody cat! It is pretty challenging to keep your flock healthy, but I managed to keep 3-4 of growups. Really nice idea for big game. You can add more signals for example to scare, spread out etc, and add some poishing, if I could, recommend addon like VCamera, and good luck for sail toward steam! sc03.png
Thanks for all the feedback. Don't hold back :).
A few of you mentioned the controls being difficult, anything specific you think could improve? I didn't really think too much about it. I wonder if there is something that could be more compelling beyond forward/backward and turn left/right. Maybe backward should be eliminated... don't think I've ever seen a duck move backwards.
As for the ducklings. They are using a vector system for movement. Avoid other ducklings, go to mom (with reduced weight when they become adult... need to have them do something more as adult I think). However, I need to add a small vector draw to food so they aren't too stupid and walk right by it. I'm thinking this may allow me to make other things more challenging by not making the picking up of food so fiddly. I was also thinking to have another random direction vector but didn't get that added in.
@super-dario - thanks for the kind words. Kids did great.
@jamope - Mama duck movement was fastest thing possible. Iteration could improve.. as per thoughts above? As for more indications. Perhaps hunger bars atop ducklings? Anything else you're thinking could be improved for indications?
@universeflow - quack, quack
@cat-value - thanks for the kind words.
@midnightmist - thanks for the kind words. I was thinking the pools of blood weren't quite appropriate for the starvation. Perhaps some gravestone.
@shanyu-jin - thanks for the kind words.
@rowling - thanks, kids did all the art/modeling. I was thinking, if we did more work on this... you could start by "coloring" your eggs - then based on the coloring by some method/mapping - your baby ducks are colored.
@anaastaska - thanks. Any thoughts on what could have made the controls easier for you? I wonder if the camera wasn't controlled by the mouse, if point and click would be better? (And hold middle/right mouse button to rotate view -- ahh, maybe no rotation should be allowed. Although ducks as many other prey animals do have eyes on the side of the head for better visibility.)
@guydesu - 谢谢您的美言.
@padla - heh, never thought of it as horror. :) Horror. That's all the rage on steam right? :)
@qqruzkin - thanks for the kind words.
@gdman - Thanks for the kind words. VCamera. Yeah, I spent more time than I should have on the camera. Ended up just going with something simple. VCamera. I did some searches but didn't seem to find the project or add-on for Godot? I found some Phantom Camera on github, might this be what you are referring to?
73, Timothy
The environment/graphics were great. Had a very nostalgic vibe. I liked the green against the blues. I liked the concept, however, sometimes it was hard to feed individual ducklings that needed to eat and they perished. I think having a more pikmin-like system of selecting specific ducklings would have helped a lot. And having hunger meters would have helped too.
I would have preferred the controls not be tanky/car-like.
Sound effects were great and very funny! Music was also great - i love how minimal and relaxing it is.
Thanks for the feedback @johnnyalfonso - what would have you liked for controls vs. tanky/car-like? Or is that your point and it should be like pikman? Thanks for sharing about pikmin... never heard of it. I'll look into it.
The game made sense but was abit difficult to keep them all alive consistently especially when that cat got jumping some of them died quite quickly to hunger, some potential here.
@runningopenloop I would have preferred if the controls were more akin to how a typical 3rd person character controls in an action, platform, or adventure game. Similar to how Mario, Link from zelda, or Captain Olimar from pikmin control in a 3d environment. That is, when you move your stick or left button left, the character will start moving left instead of rotating counter-clockwise or turning left.
So in a way, yes, i would prefer movement to be more like how captain olimar controls in pikmin. But, my initial comment about pikmin was in regards to how captain olimar can select/deselect individual or groups of pikmin to follow him or perform his commands
@runningopenloop
I tried linking to a youtube video, but ludum dare website seems to remove it so i would just skim thru a playthrough of Pikmin to see what im talking about :)
Thanks @johnnyalfonso .
Ah, missed your comment above @johnnyalfonso . Yeah, that's what I wanted to be sure of the movement tank/steering opinion. The strafe left/right vs. turn left/right must be the thing people are not liking. I'll have to try it out. I can say, I did consider doing strafe left/right but decided that wasn't going to be "realistic" to how a duck moves. That would mean (probably) turning would require the mouse. Of course, this is a game. Thanks for the additional clarifications! I'll try this stuff out.
@beats , thanks for the feedback. I'm hoping adding a vector to help the ducks move to the food when close will make the feeding not fiddly. In **my mind** the game is balanced (player does ok/breaks even) when surviving with 2 to 4 ducks as per expectations in the wild. > 5 alive is winning. <= 1 is losing. But maybe some different game results are in order vs. real life.
quack :3 im hungwy :3
Very cool concept! I played with my kids and we managed to keep two ducklings alive =)
I, for one, have entered the matrix.
Screenshot 2026-05-02 at 21-59-59 Mama Duck Hero ldjam.com Ludum Dare game jam.png
It's a surprisingly brutal game, did not see that coming. :D Nice idea! As others have said, controls and general feedback to the player could need some work. But now I'll go for another round to see if I can get any of them to actually survive.
Edit: 3 adults! Wohoo. But man, the little ones are a little stupid, I basically have to route them precisely such that they stumble into food and otherwise won't eat despite being hungry. :D
Well, at least 4 of my ducks survived.. that counts for something, right? It was hard to get the hungry ones food, since the less hungry ones kept eating them. I loved the voice acting, and it's impressive that your kids were able to help so much! Nice game!