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A fun rhythmic casual beat’ em up | Punch Kick Duck - First Impressions

1K View2023-02-04

You are imprisoned at the bottom of a tower and have escaped. Your fellow animals are out to stop you from going up and escaping. As luck would have it, you can do three simple moves; Punch Kick Duck, and that’s the title of the game. That’s all you need really, to stop them from stopping you in this fun and lovely rhythmic beat ‘em up made specifically for mobile phones.

You can play Punch Kick Duck in either landscape or portrait mode, with controller support as well. Whatever works best for you. The game itself is easy to learn; just three types of attack. But it’s hard to master, because each enemy has their own attack-type that you need to counter in a rock-paper-scissors format. Punch beats Kick, Kick beats Duck, and Duck beats Punch. No need to move, as the game auto-moves your character.

For example, all bunnies use a kick attack, so you have to punch them in order to knock them out. Using kicks will just negate both of your attacks, while using duck will cause you to get hit. It gets confusing at first but given practice, it becomes just second nature and you will instinctively choose the right move for the right enemy.

The combat flow is oddly rhythmic and hitting combos gives off a satisfying feeling that will surely keep you playing for more levels, although it gets a bit hard starting at the third level, especially when you are swarmed with different types of enemies and you have to react in a timely manner in order to beat them.

In the later levels, some enemy types will have multiple types of attacks depending on their stances, so you have to pay extra attention so you can use the appropriate move to beat them. Some will also throw objects at you like bottles and food carts.

You only have one free revive, after that, it's game over when you get damaged again. Fortunately you can replenish this free revive by just continuing to beat down enemies, Giving you an extra life again. Game over means the level will just get restarted.

The 2.5D visuals are lovely and the upbeat music perfectly fits the gameplay, to the point that it almost plays like a rhythm game. My thoughts so far? Punch Kick Duck is a simple but a fun challenging game, and it’s free-to-play too, just with minor ads and optional microtransactions.

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