Review: Gravity Duck (Nintendo Switch)

Aptly titled, Gravity Duck has the controlling of gravity serve as its key feature. It’s an entertaining, if hardly original, element. Apart from its budget price of $4.99, Gravity Duck really has nothing to make it stand out from the crowd. It’s a fairly easy puzzle platformer, with no innovation. While not a bad little game, the emphasis is on little – 90 minutes or so is all you’ll need to fly through this unambitious download.

Your goal in this game is to collect golden eggs. There’s no real story to speak of, not even small cutscenes between chapters. Despite this, the game is 100% linear, which serves no purpose given the absence of plot. The short levels quickly start feeling like more of the same; a sizable percentage of them can be beaten in mere seconds. Only a handful will take more than a few minutes, due to the trial and error that stems from being unable to see threats until you’re on top of them.

This could’ve been helped had developer Woblyware not taken such a minimalistic approach. Their earliest Switch release, League of Evil, is another ‘140 levels, 4 chapters platformer’. Yet it has achievements, a level editor, and a star system for replay. Gravity Duck is bare-bones by comparison.

The pixel art looks nice, and the music didn’t get on my nerves. The latter is rather amazing considering this entire game just has one music track. It illustrates that Gravity Duck isn’t just small in terms of playtime, but also scope. Hence my smaller review.

Gravity Duck offers an entertaining enough, if repetitively simple, time. But it ends far too quickly. Taking into account what other low-priced Switch titles offer, including those from the same developer, this game is a sizable distance from great. Gravity Duck does nothing to stand apart amidst its crowded genre. Having zero replay incentive is a crucial blunder! It might have been better staying a free flash game or a cheap mobile offering. This Duck needed more time in the oven to reach its potential.