Duck Life seems to be one of those flash games that a lot of people tend to remember very fondly as one of the hallmarks of games they played during class time. I feel like a big part of this reason is the combination of it being one you can easily tab out of without ruining anything at all, with the stop-start pacing it has, and the fact that ducks are cute, even basic geometric, beady eyed abominations such as these, which makes it an appealing choice just by glancing over it. Why am I going to any lengths at all to try explaining potential reasons why this was such a popular flash game? Well, because it kinda isn't particularly great at all.
The main issue comes from the fact that training your duck to win races means playing the same 3 extremely limited, repetitive minigames over and over with no variation until you've got enough points to be able to win the race, get a bit of money to level up the duck's stats, and then go right back to grinding out these same few minigames until you're able to beat the next lot of races, rinse and repeat until you win the game. None of these minigames are particularly well put together either, with the best one being the swimming one where you have to dodge obstacles by either diving underwater or jumping over them, but even this feel genuinely less fun to play than the Chrome Dinosaur game, which I'm saying with literally no exaggeration at all. The only reason I'm really giving this game any credit at all is because 1, the ducks are kinda cute despite also being kinda nightmarish, and 2, because while it's incredibly shallow and everything, seeing numbers go up and then watching the races is a bit of fun.
With all that said, if a game's having to rely on making my monkey brain get excited over a rising number to be entertaining at all, I'm not going to be particularly pleased, even if my monkey brain means that I'll still enjoy it. There are definitely many far more interesting flash games, though I do understand why this was so appealing to play in the classroom when the other option was doing schoolwork.
The main issue comes from the fact that training your duck to win races means playing the same 3 extremely limited, repetitive minigames over and over with no variation until you've got enough points to be able to win the race, get a bit of money to level up the duck's stats, and then go right back to grinding out these same few minigames until you're able to beat the next lot of races, rinse and repeat until you win the game. None of these minigames are particularly well put together either, with the best one being the swimming one where you have to dodge obstacles by either diving underwater or jumping over them, but even this feel genuinely less fun to play than the Chrome Dinosaur game, which I'm saying with literally no exaggeration at all. The only reason I'm really giving this game any credit at all is because 1, the ducks are kinda cute despite also being kinda nightmarish, and 2, because while it's incredibly shallow and everything, seeing numbers go up and then watching the races is a bit of fun.
With all that said, if a game's having to rely on making my monkey brain get excited over a rising number to be entertaining at all, I'm not going to be particularly pleased, even if my monkey brain means that I'll still enjoy it. There are definitely many far more interesting flash games, though I do understand why this was so appealing to play in the classroom when the other option was doing schoolwork.