Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Propaganda and Rhetoric
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 277 | 2.70 | 34 | |
| Fun | 282 | 2.35 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 71 | 3.71 | 33 | |
| Theme | 254 | 2.75 | 33 | |
| Graphics | 263 | 2.71 | 33 | |
| Audio | 224 | 2.43 | 31 | |
| Humor | 110 | 2.80 | 32 | |
| Mood | 252 | 2.73 | 32 |
I'm kinda stuck but I like the idea. I found the things I was supposed to find, but when I put it in the dossier, it still says I'm wrong. Not sure if I'm still missing a piece of the puzzle, or if I'm just inputting it wrong. Good game though, I love seeing multimedia projects like this.
@tolviere thanks for playing! im glad you liked the artsy fartsy side of what i made. the solution has misdirection built in, no extra pieces, but thanks for comments this let me make sure there's no bug and it's still winnable
I have restored balance to the Ducknasty. This is certainly a unique experience! I think it would have probably been better to hand-pick where the links should go in the news website rather then having them be random. The last three links all appeared in roughly the same spot on the page for me.
Also: flipping back and forth between the game window and a website was a bit awkward. Since your graphical needs are simple, I probably would have forgone the COTS engine and done the game entirely using JS and WebGL. That way you could integrate the "news website" much more seamlessly into the game (or vice versa).
Interesting concept! The instructions are a bit vague, I assumed the link would be to a selfhosted version of the game or a portfolio or something, but it's actually part of the game itself. I think it would be more interesting if the clues were hidden inside actual text, rather than finding wiggly words in walls of lorem ipsum. But this made it relatively simple to find what I was looking for. Except for the home page, either I was blind or it took a bunch of refreshes until it wiggled a word I actually noticed :D
Copy pasting didn't work properly for me, it didn't update itself so you'd paste the previous clipboard. There are two menus that can show up, and it only works on the one that only has paste as an option. The other menu also includes cut copy etc and with keyboard shortcuts, but it seems that one doesn't use the actual clipboard content. Using firefox.
Good job though! :D
removed LD build since has bugs not found on itch
@frib thank you for the feedback! i wanted to be cryptic, 4th wall breaking psychological puzzle horror game was the idea. i also had way more plans for how to incorporate the proper-goose.com side and wanted to make that a full point and click puzzle, but designing a puzzle in 48 hours is insane so this turned into more of a conceptual art piece with simple puzzle mechanics.
and thanks for the feedback on the copy paste! i dont think its something i'm allowed to fix because its not actually a bug, that's just how iframes work. i would need to code copy/paste input keys and logic in the godot code for that to work on an embedded web build...
but firefox has a feature for that?!?!? so cool!
@hammeredzombie yeah, apparently it has, lol. I was playing the LD embedded version. I tried the itch version just now, and it allowed me to click on the link to the newspaper site, which didn't work before. But the pasting feature works even less than the LD-hosted version, as it doesn't seem to refresh with the latest clipboard, so this secret feature isn't very helpful :')
I do have the continuously panning camera issue on the itch hosted version, that I didn't have on the LD hosted version. This is usually a firefox-related issue (my mouse captured unity web games have the same problem), and one way to fix it is to fullscreen the game if possible. It should work fine on chrome browsers, but I just wanted to let you know so you're aware of this
@henk thanks for playing and saving my little duck brain. the first line made me smile and released a lot of tension from this experience. 48 hours is not a lot of time. the website word wiggle was a last ditch effort to make something coherent, but i want to go way deeper and have a full point and click puzzle connected to the in game universe
and having the website hosted separately was trying to do an ARG thing, the ux between the two is definitely awkward and will need to be managed carefully in the design if i want to keep going with the ARG approach. thanks again from playing and im glad you found the solution!!
@henk good idea about hand picking the words. that was an opportunity for level design that i let rng handle. make the first page easy, then build from there. cant wait to try this again in october!
Screenshot 2026-04-22 013615.png
Oh man, i always wanted to participate in a "real" hunt like this, but i always get to know about them after they are done x) Nice to have a game that gives the feeling.
The first thing i did was trying to go full hacker mode... apparently you were prepared:
Screenshot 2026-04-22 013024.png
Would've loved to see and do more in the actual game, maybe not getting the answers from the website, but getting questions to ask the other Ducks for the real answers, needing to find the duck that knows the answer to the question.
Non the less, i had a good time looking for all the answers!
I've restored balance to the Ducknasty
Full points for innovation here, I've never played anything like this.
@thoastbot i teared up seeing that you found the easter egg and i wanted to incorporate hacker mechanics into the puzzle so bad, but had to choose a simple mechanic at the. this game was actually inspired by a podcast about the dark web https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/172/
@poboy thank you! i definitely went into the deep end with this one. i had the title a few weeks ago listening to the podcast linked above. the guest studied "rhetoric and propaganda" at university and i was like 'oh thats totally a game title' and here we are!!!!!1!
omg this is so cuuuute!! Do you have any ideas of working more on this game in the future>
it was very difficult to discover how to play this game
I think I like the idea of what this is supposed to be, but I couldn't discover how to actually play it or conceptualize what I was playing... that includes even after downloading the source code
Like the absurdist vibe
I'm probably too dumb for this game, xDD. I didn't understand what was required of me in the end, in addition to opening the site, finding phrases and matching pictures. But the idea is generally not bad, although not very convenient, as the commentators above have already said. In general: well done.
I liked the format of going to a website for clues. I agree that it could have been fun to visit real websites, though those are subject to change. The website for this game looks like the real deal. Really nice. Cute "restricted" easter egg. I had to find it when I saw the image.
I thought the puzzle was unnecessarily difficult. While the actual solution was straight forward, I found the board in the game world was a red herring, misleading me.
Very cool! Love the idea of scouring an outside resource.
Can be fun in these games to allow the player to have a partial success, to let them know they are on the right track (e.g., entering in the text one at a time. I tried entering the first clue, and got the same 'bam' as entering wrong info. "Do I have the first clue wrong, or do I just have to enter them all first? Maybe I'm on the wrong path." - that kind of thing)
Loved the site's style, and a duck-duck-goose goose-hunt spy-thriller is fantastic theming. Great job!
Needed some time to dig in, and i think i`m missing something. But i see the idea and its very good. Nice game!
@plutonicrock i very much do!! waiting for the voting period to end so i can start work again with all the feedback
@theoconfidor this game needed a tutorial or some kind of feedback to the player. thanks for playing and the remarks!
@pragmascript i call it punsmaxxing : D
@paulsams im glad you liked the concept! i got work to do on the game/puzzle design but going to keep running with this goose/duck ARG think ive started
@pincushion the red herring with the misdirecting logic was the only "puzzle" i could think of at the end :( i submitted this game thinking no one would solve it because there isn't much to solve. "annoying riddle" is definitely a sentiment people have and is appropriate description for this game i think
@ugly-robot im glad you like the theme and style! the site is inspired by AP news if uncle sam were the web designer. @venomousmouse im glad you also liked the concept and generally had a good time even though you were confused.
lots to work on puzzle/game design wise, but im so excited that the concept is being well received!
Unique concept, it was actually interesting solve it, well done!
Screenshot 2026-04-25 160913.png
I didn't quite understand, but I get the idea
Is there any ability to turn down the mouse sensitivity? the tiniest nudge sends the camera full up or down and no way of looking anywhere else.
@catanus @fifut thank you so much for playing! its really interesting to see who solves it and who doesnt. i got a lot of puzzle design studying to do.
@darkshadow i did not include any options unfourtunetly. what kind of device and browser are you using?
@hammeredzombie Ubuntu linux, firefox with a normal mouse and keyboard
This is unique for sure!
This is a really neat entry. I think given more dev time there could be a really fun world where you decipher an ARG. But for a compo game this was a really clever take. I also love the goosetopo
Excellent. It was interesting how after a while I became adept at catching those tiny CSSs. Also the duck world gives the whole thing this air of mystery, like I can't confidently say that I wasn't just programmed to be an assassin.
@darkshadow thanks for that feedback. there does seem to be some weirdness with firefox that i cant pinpoint. sorr y about that :(
@ruruie thank you! i definitely leaned into a direction with this one
@tinykidtoo the puzzle aspect is what got me in the end. i had much grander ideas in my head, which now im going to do! and im surprised goosetapo isnt a thing already. i dont see much online.
@kr4ft3r did you use any refresh spamming or were you good at visually scanning the page? and im glad you liked the weird little universe i created! thats my favorite part too and the general concept of simulating one thing while showing it in an absurd context. you were an assassin, but for what? dun. dun. duuuuunnnnnn!!!
@hammeredzombie To kill the presiduck? To answer your question, I was confused at first and only spotted the message because it was somewhere in the header, and it took a few page changes. After that, for a while I was still able to only spot it when it would appear in header area. So becoming "adept" was gradual process and I had a lot of practice because only on the 3rd life did I figure out that I need to type in the whole phrase, and I went through a lot of pages until then.
This is a unique approach to constructing a gameplay. There is a small issue with how you need to press Escape on itch page to go check the website, and then get back and reactivate the game on itch, so to say. But the idea of us needing "external" materials is cool. I'll be honest, I didn't manage to "win" the game; I did look for clues and did find the wavy words with clues on the site. I tried writing in the phrase I got (for example: Home... is where the heart is), just the corresponding picture (Home... Heart) or picture number (Home... 1) but got Bam! after each try so it seems all of those are wrong. I wasn't sure what is going on in general either depsite reading the intro ^^' I wish I could understand the puzzle and the story better, but nonetheless, interesting experience :)
I like this scene and the artistic style. The group of ducks are very cute. The gameplay is also very unique. It's impressive to see such a masterpiece created in such a short period of time.
ARG puzzle solving across a website is a really interesting idea – I've never played anything like this before. The duck world and the fake news site are charming, and the concept feels fresh. That said, the hints are quite obscure: the wiggly words are random and hard to spot, the in‑game board misled me, and copy‑paste didn't work well in Firefox. I also had no idea what exactly to type at first. Still, once I figured it out, it was a unique and fun experience. Hope the dev expands this into a full game!