Duck Paradox is a unique gem, featuring an adorable charm and highly replayable loop that feels like an old-school platformer more than a modern roguelike. Steep bullet hell difficulty aside, it deserves more content to keep players saving the day with an ever-growing waddling of ducks alongside of Dr. Paraducks!
Being DigitalChumps’ resident goose expert for the past several years, I’ve taken it upon myself to explicitly want games featuring geese, birds, and ducks. Every time I see a goose in the neighborhood, I wish it a friendly honk. At one point, I had three ducks as pets – they were awesome. You’re welcome for me sharing my history with fun avians, folks.
These are my qualifications for assessing games with ducks and/or geese. I was required to share them; I don’t make the rules.
Duck Paradox is a game about a scientist, Dr. Paraducks, and her pet duck. Well, not just any scientist, or any duck. This lonely scientist befriended a duck (aptly named QUARK) while she was on a personal quest to make a time machine! That duck unfortunately flew into the time machine once the scientist got it running, fracturing the universe and creating wormholes of evil ducks. Now, the scientist had to travel through the fractured universe, rescue her pet Quark, and restore everything to their original state.
That’s the gist of Duck Paradox’s story. It’s simple. It’s silly yet to the point. It contains the perfect amount of silliness that doesn’t artificially make it bigger than it actually is. Go save your pet duck!
The issue with Duck Paradox is that it’s a generally simple title without the gameplay levers that are added to roguelikes and other highly-replayable games that add longevity. I was able to “finish” the game’s main story after around three hours. By that point, I wanted more, but I didn’t want to replay a smaller pool of looped levels with the entire set of content I had unlocked. I wanted more.
I’m getting ahead of myself, as I haven’t yet described the gameplay loop of Duck Paradox. It’s quite unique, really, as it is a mashup of a roguelike bullet hell platformer meets Wario Land 4/Pizza Tower. You start out with a gun, no upgrades, and one objective: Save Quark! His little icon popped up on the screen and quacked at me to give me a hint as to which direction I should go. Every so often, a blue and red duck would pop out of a portal and chase me until I shot and killed it. Upon finding Quark, all of the portals would go into overdrive, sending waves of corrupted ducks my way as I backtracked to the beginning so I could escape from the current universe. At the end, I am given an opportunity to select from run-specific upgrades, like a larger jump, larger bullets, rapid fire, and additional energy that can be used to slow down time.
This gameplay loop continues level after level until you reach the eighth on your current “loop,” where you’ll face a gigantic duck boss. There are three bosses in total, but the other two bosses are locked away behind specific conditions that require the player to seek out special elements hidden throughout the levels. Only in the hub are these secondary conditions referenced, which was slightly frustrating as I was not 100% sure of what I was looking for in each level along with how to activate these objectives.
Things get difficult very quickly because of how Magic Games has emphasized this title being a bullet hell platformer. In this case, any bullet you shoot that does not come in contact with an enemy duck will continue to bounce through the level for a set period of time…and that bullet will kill Dr. Paraducks in an instant. Being trigger happy and shooting willy nilly will lead a roguelike run screeching to a halt. Slowing down time helps avoid death, but…them bullets. Them bullets hurt!
I’m usually fine with a steep difficulty curve in a roguelike, but Duck Paradox’s is unusually grueling and nearly counterintuitive to most players’ assumptions of how twin stick shooters (even in a platforming environment) should function. Friendly-fire being the default and sole difficulty setting means that players should shoot less instead of going full chaos mode with attempting to clear waves of chaotic ducks. It took a minute for me to fully grasp that I wasn’t immune to my own attacks and that I had to dodge both my projectiles and the flashing ducks that were homing in on my position.
I know that this is a bullet hell game. I know that this would imply that the difficulty would be steep. However, I fear that players will get too frustrated with dying to stick with the game. There should be an “easier” difficulty that makes it so that the first few levels make Dr. Paraducks immune to her own bullets.
The other resultant impact of friendly fire is that the bullet upgrades earned at the end of the level feel less satisfying when I’m too afraid to use them and/or able to spam them in a space without concern that I may end my run because I’m learning about what an upgrade does to my bullet patterns. In one run, I had picked up an upgrade that would turn the first bullet into an explosive when I picked up a shield, but the resultant explosion could kill me if I was too close. It wasn’t until I came across another upgrade that made me immune to explosions where I would feel more confident shooting explosive bullets willy nilly.
Getting upgrades is a cute affair, though. Every egg collected at the end of a level would give me a little duck that would follow me around. On my best run, I had 25 little ducklings following me around as I was shooting through waves of corrupted ducks and hyperspace.
I mentioned earlier in this review that levels contain secondary objectives, some of which are not explained too well. Aside from additional eggs that are cleverly tucked away behind breakable walls and in the middle of a dangerous lava pit, I could opt into taking Quark to a gigantic flower before taking it back to the start of the level. Upon exposing Quark to one of these flowers, the next level would take place in a different “realm” with an entirely new aesthetic and win condition. The Disco realm had me use a massive disco ball to break through glass walls to get Quark. The Bath/Suds realm involved me taking control of Quark and leading an evil variant of Dr. Paraducks into a shower to “cleanse” her of corruption so I could finish the level.
Roguelike gameplay loops involve lots of dying. After taking three hits, Dr. Paraducks is taken back to her hub where she can engage in target practice, take a look at the duck upgrades she has unlocked so far…and that’s about it. There are no gameplay levers (like permanent passives, additional health) that can soften the blow of each subsequent loss. Instead, the player is to start each new run with their gun and that’s it. The only exception to this are the gadgets that can be unlocked upon defeating a specific boss, but you still need to collect their three parts during each run before you can actually use those weapons.
Playing Duck Paradox reminded me of the old school levels of game difficulty, in which my character was fragile and could succumb to a single hit. Precision and patience helped me defeat the game’s few bosses. For today’s players, Duck Paradox will be a good challenge that gives players as little as possible to get to the end. Thankfully, that end is not as far as you might think.
Do I wish that there was more roguelike variance in the form of additional bosses, realms, and weapons? Absolutely. Duck Paradox has a natural degree of replay value in its loop-based routine of completing eight levels, slaying a boss, and continuing on until enemies’ power outpaces Dr. Paraducks’ congregation of ducklings following her through the levels. The fact that I could “beat” the game’s bosses and unlock everything in just over three hours is enough to tell me that there’s some untapped areas for Magic Games to consider as future content drops. I sincerely hope that they take Duck Paradox further with more levels, bosses, and chaos.
Before concluding this review, I want to emphasize that I had fun playing Duck Paradox. There’s little question that you will have fun, too. Quark’s cute quacks were so charming and silly that I would often forget about the challenge present in dodging my own bullets, let alone the corrupted ducks that flew my way on my path to fix the universe. The entire thematic begs the player to avoid taking it seriously and just have fun!
Duck Paradox is a unique gem, featuring an adorable charm and highly replayable loop that feels like an old-school platformer more than a modern roguelike. Steep bullet hell difficulty aside, it deserves more content to keep players saving the day with an ever-growing waddling of ducks alongside of Dr. Paraducks!
