LÖVE

Hi guys!
We've been working on Duck Marines on/off for quite some time and are very close to having version 1.0 out.
However we decided it would make sense to make small a release candidate first and show to it you guys.

Duck Marines is a free software PC remake of a Dreamcast game called ChuChu Rocket. The local multiplayer is awesome but nobody owns a Dreamcast these days so we decided to remake it on the PC with whatever changes we found appropriate, including mini games, a level editor, a new graphical style and a lot more customization.

How to play
The goal of the game is to get as many ducks into the submarine of your color. Gray ducks give you one point, gold ducks give multiple points and pink ducks will trigger an event or mini game.

Guide the ducks towards your submarine by placing arrows on the ground. When walking over an arrow ducks will instead walk in the direction the arrow is pointing.

Beware of the blue predators. Predators love to eat ducks and will kill a large number of your ducks if they reach your submarine. Try instead to guide the predators to the other players’ submarines using your arrows.

Controls

• Controller: Move cursor with left analog stick. Place arrows with the four face buttons or with the right analog stick. (Recommended!)
• Keyboard: Move cursor with arrow keys and place arrow by holding space and pressing a direction.
• Mouse: Place arrows by clicking and dragging in the desired direction then releasing.

Feedback
If you happen to find any bugs or annoyances in general please report them so we can fix it before release.

There is a built-in level editor. If you happen to make some levels that you think would be great to have in the game feel free to make an issue/pull request or send them in an emal. User-made levels are saved in or the equivalent on your OS.

Download

https://github.com/SimonLarsen/duckmarines/releases/

The mouse behaviour is really erratic - I thought the game was bugged because on the player selection screen it starts to only work with the arrow keys.

Other than that, pretty cool game! Challenging, charming and fun, kudos on the great work!

Probably the best Chu Chu Rocket clone I've seen

Not really my type, but I must say this one is very well polished, and has a lot of fun.
You are doing great, Simon. Keep it up!

Design looks really nice. I realy like colors

I confirm the mouse issues.

I was able to use it on the first screen, but then it "dissapeared" (I could still move the cursor with the keyboard arrows). Playing this game without a mouse is not fun IMHO.

I love the idea and would love to try local multiplayer, but haven't found the controls yet.
Could you give a quick overview of the controls?

That would be great. It looks extremely nice, keep it up! Looking forward to trying this with some people.

Roland_Yonaba wrote:Not really my type, but I must say this one is very well polished, and has a lot of fun.
You are doing great, Simon. Keep it up!

Thanks! Although I can't take all the credit. As usual Lukas did all the awesome artwork.

kikito wrote:I confirm the mouse issues.

I was able to use it on the first screen, but then it "dissapeared" (I could still move the cursor with the keyboard arrows). Playing this game without a mouse is not fun IMHO.

I've readded the mouse control scheme now. However the game is really meant to be played on the couch with a controller and three other people. The keyboard and mouse control schemes are really only there to substitute a controller if you don't have access to four of them.

Germanunkol wrote:I love the idea and would love to try local multiplayer, but haven't found the controls yet.
Could you give a quick overview of the controls?

I forgot to add the controls from the website to the forum post. They should be there now. Please beware that it might not work very well with controllers not recognized as a "gamepad".

I would have to say thank you for sharing what I missed in my childhood. I'm practically loving the fun Casual-gamer Experience in this one.

Now for some comments:
1. I'm a mouse-dependent player. Playing maybe with the mouse is obviously inefficient and buggy, but I'm having decent games with it.
2. On the keyboard: maybe arrow keys for guiding the cursor, and then "wsad" for the arrow keys? Too bad I can't say the same thing for the mouse (mouse+keyboard). I messed up the code just to experiment on it, and I'm doing better when the Mouse keys are set to: 'l' = left, 'r' = right, 'wu' = up, 'wd' = down.
3. I really hope that Duck Marines would have its own "weird" commercial.
*4. (Enhancement suggestion): 4 directions for the fall animation. For now, there's only facing front.

T-Bone wrote:Probably the best Chu Chu Rocket clone I've seen

Wow, haven't played that game in years!

I haven't played Chu Chu Rocket in a long time, I mean really.. I played the game a lot back in the dreamcast days as it was an amazing game! I would actually say this is MUCH more difficult than chu-chu rocket but for the sake of it I did test this game out with a dreamcast controller!

This game is fun and is a blast, you did a splendid job! Also Kudos for releasing source code as you never know when bugs may find it's way into a game and it's easily fixed by a user!