Review: Fox Vs Duck

Overview

In Fox Vs Duck you play as baby ducklings trying to outsmart the dangerous environment.  Your mission is to escape the pond that you are dropped in the middle of. The Fox and an unmentioned Koi Fish will always be chasing your Ducks as you tilt to guide them safely off the platform. There are a number of bonuses that fall along with your ducklings such as increased time limits. The overall feeling of the game is very relaxing with calming music and water droplets falling constantly. The graphics are really crisp, and the Fox Vs Duck, Life Vs Death idea is displayed in a very zen fashion. Open Feint is included for social score keeping. This is the second game from Tak Fung, the developer of MiniSquadron.

Features

There are two modes in Fox Vs Duck, Challenge mode and Survival Mode. In challenge mode you start out with a timer bar that drops steadily, increasing a slightly with each duck you save, and increasing a lot each time you reach a new level. Survival mode has you start out with 5 lives and will allow you to take your time while you roll around the pond and consider the perfect move. Each game will last less than a minute on average, from start to finish. Your duckling falls at the center of a gray circle and is represented by a ball with tiny flapping wings. You tilt your Idevice to guide the ball out of the circle in any direction. Guiding your duckling off the platform however is not going to be easy. The Fox can only walk on the outer edge of the pond but moves faster as time goes on, making it harder to evade as the game progresses. There is also a Koi fish under the water that turns red then becomes hostile and can move about two times faster than your duckings, but does need to make wide turns. There are obstacles to be dealt with as well. Lilly pads appear that can be pushed out of the way but slow you down, and gray spheres appear on the surface of the water which you must go around. Bonuses drop in the form of tiny colored dots and include Speed Up, Extra Life, and Plus Time. The play-time is akin to Doodle Jump where a few little mistakes will end your game quickly. The social score keeping is an important part of this game and will give you a reason to keep playing.

The Good

The game is calming, so calming in fact that you could almost use the loading screen as a relaxation app. The overall feeling both in graphics, and buttons is crisp. The objective is straight forward and your remaining time or lives is displayed clearly at the top of the screen. When one of your ducklings die, there is a pool of red blood in the white and gray world. The Koi fish and the Fox combine to make a pretty cool dynamic where you can lead them to one side then try to escape from the other side of the circle of play as a strategy. Open Feint is a major factor in adding to replayability on this game. This game is unlike most other apps with an overall calming zen experience coupled with a hectic rush to beat the timer. You can chose timing or life based to determine your degree of zen. With a predominantly black and white screen, the red pools of blood hilight death in a powerful way unlike many other apps out there.

The Bad

Fox Vs Duck would more appropriately be titled Koi Vs Duck since the Koi fish will represent most of the deaths you incur. The graphics although crisp and fluid, leave out color, and are quite simple. The duck is actually just a ball with tiny flapping wings. This game doesn't make good use of the whole screen leaving large parts unused during gameplay. The tilt controls, despite having a calibrate option, are not as responsive as they should be. The game relies so heavily on tilt controls that due to a lack of responsiveness, you might see your duckling roll the wrong way even as you tilt in the opposite direction. The gameplay can be frustrating and once you have played one time, you have seen the whole game. From that point forward you just work on learning tricks and strategies to last longer so you can bump up that Open Feint score.

The Verdict

Fox Vs Duck is a crisply designed and smooth flowing game, but the slow responding tilt controls will leave something to be desired. The calming zen theme is a great idea and is executed quite well. The graphics are nice but there is barely any color. Since the game takes place within the gray circle, the whole screen is not utilized for gameplay. If you are a fan of games like Doodle Jump, where you play quick rounds to compete against social score boards then this game will grab your attention.

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