Dungeons and Ducklings

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: Review code provided by the kind folks at Silesia Games)

Dungeons and Ducklings is a family-friendly Arcade-style game released in 2024 on PC and then in 2025 ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This game has players taking the role of a mother duck who finds her ducklings have all been… poisoned? Kidnapped? It’s not really clear, but in any case, the resident of the nearby castle is the one responsible, so she resolves to head there to retrieve her wayward youths and possibly teach the one(s) responsible a lesson in the process.

Dungeons and Ducklings is very much like the game Pac-Man 256, where players are presented with a top-down maze that stretches on seemingly infinitely upwards, and they must navigate the maze upwards while avoiding enemies and hazards, and not taking too long lest the lethal black smoke rising from the bottom of the screen catches up with you.

This game is being labeled as a “Roguelite”, but even though levels are randomly-generated, I don’t think the gameplay differs enough from run to run in a way that such a label would apply here. At the very least the “-lite” part of things fits, as players gather up coins in each run that can be spent to get permanent upgrades for use on later runs.

The first such upgrade is an attack, and I would say that this is where this game differs the most from Pac-Man 256 – while that game did have attacks, they were very much like Pac-Man’s power pellets – something you only got occasionally, in limited supply. In Dungeons and Ducklings, you’re constantly filling up a meter to earn your next attack, and in addition you can munch on food that will give you a single-use attack right away, so every new attack never feels too far away. You can even upgrade your character to store multiple attacks so ideally you always have one or two at the ready when you need to clear away enemies or blocks barring your pathway.

However, since I’m comparing to Pac-Man 256, I need to note that the controls don’t feel as tight here, and since your character apparently moves in half-blocks rather than full blocks you can sometimes find yourself stuck on scenery. On that note, it’s a bit frustrating that it’s not quite clear where your full hitbox is, making it hard to judge whether you would or wouldn’t be able to squeeze safely through an area in time as a monster just barely sails by you.

The presentation here is decent, but feels a bit muddled – the game has simple 2D pixel art retro-style visuals during gameplay, but this doesn’t quite seem to fit the voice acting that you’ll encounter throughout the game or the more detailed pixel art in the shop menu. None of this is outright terrible, it just doesn’t seem very cohesive to me. Oh, and completing the package is some repetitive synthesized music that works well enough for the gameplay, but didn’t really grab me.

In the end, I don’t think Dungeons and Ducklings quite lives up to its clear inspiration, Pac-Man 256. However, the experience it delivers is different enough that it might be worth your while if you enjoy old-school Arcade-style games, and especially if you enjoyed Pac-Man 256 and want something similar. For only $5, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

tl;dr – Dungeons and Ducklings is a family-friendly Arcade-style game that has players taking the role of a mother duck dodging enemies and traps in a seemingly-endless maze, with gameplay that seems directly inspired by Pac-Man 256. It’s not quite as good as that game, but Dungeons and Ducklings is still an enjoyable retro-style top-down Arcade-style game worth a look for fans of the genre.

Grade: B-

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