I was pretty skeptical about Daffy Duck: Fowl Play when Ian picked it for January 2024’s Yokoi Kids game. Sure the animation was nice, but since it was a Looney Tunes related game I didn’t expect much. I didn’t even really start playing it until late January. And for several days I was surprised to find it so captivating. It’s a truly unique experience. A somewhat sucky, but unique experience.
The game is a basic walk left to right side scroller with the boss being Bugs Bunny thwarting your efforts to get a treasure chest at the end of each level. He drops bombs, safes, and icicles on Daffy. The plot involves Bugs and Daffy going on a treasure hunt together. I’m not quite sure why Bugs Bunny is trying to brutally keep Daffy from getting a some treasure. That dude is such a stinker.
To defend yourself through the six levels, you have an unlimited amount of dynamite that you can aim at or drop on enemies. Once it’s lit you have three seconds to throw it or it blows you up. It’s tricky to master, but you’ll get used to it. It’s satisfying to just drop dynamite right on an enemies head.
Instead of a timer you have Daffy’s hunger meter. When you kill an enemy you get to eat it’s remains. And by remains, I mean they turn into a gumball, ice cream, or a hunk of meat. I’m going to assume the hunk of meat is their dynamite charred carcass. If the hunger meter gets below 30%, Daffy does some animation where his poor little tummy is empty and you need to hunt down some prey to fill it back up again before you starve to death.
Back to that animation, it’s so good for this style of game. Daffy has so many different little animation, many from when he gets hurt, and you’ll be seeing that a lot. And when you beat a level, he does this little dance and it’s mighty rewarding.
So after the praise of the animation, I should now mention that the game kind of sucks. It’s broken. Well, it’s not really broken, it probably just didn’t go through too much testing. Or devs did test it and go, “Eh, the kids will figure it out”. There are all kinds of imperfections in the game.
Sometimes during the aforementioned “Daffy’s starving” animation, you might be mid-jump over a cliff. Once the animation is over, you’ll fall right down that hole. If you’re by an enemy and you’re at that 30% mark, you will be hurt. If you’re holding a stick of dynamite in your hand, you will blow up. It really could have been thought out better. And it’s not just the hungry ducky animations that can ruin the game play. If you are about to snag some of that life saving enemy meat, it starts a cute little animation of Daffy lifting said food to his mouth. If you get hit before that animation ends, it nulls that consumption. It can be very infuriating.
The items like coins and food don’t stay on the screen for very long. Sometimes you will kill an enemy with a long range dynamite throw, and by the time you get close to your much rewarded toasted flesh, it has disappeared.
Which brings us to another issue, the recovery time after you get hit is often non-existent. I didn’t mention this before, but when you get hit, you don’t completely lose your health. A heart will jump out of Daffy, and if you recover it quick enough before it disappears, you can regain it. No harm no fowl (see what I did there?). But sometimes you can get wrecked by an enemy twenty times in a second if you’re positioned too close. You will only lose one heart (most times) but it may be too late to recover it.
Now, I can’t tell if this is a broken mechanic or was planned, but sometimes if you’re getting wrecked by multiple enemies and being knocked back and forth, more than one heart will come out. And it’s not really reducing any from your stock hearts. You can gather up more hit points this way. You can go from four hearts to six just buy purposely putting yourself in between a couple of spiders and letting them fuck you up. But sometimes they will knock you right off a cliff if you’re not careful.
The enemies re-spawn randomly on each new screen. Let’s say you’re on the forest level and you’re dealing with those annoying porcupines and end up eating it off a cliff toward the end of the screen. On your next life, there will be no more porcupines, but a bunch of bats, a giant cat and some piranha plants. It’s very random. This works with the secret treasure holes as well. They just pop up randomly without warning. So it’s not all bad.
While I was playing I would get increasingly frustrated with the enemy layout on the last level. But every fifth playthrough or so, it would be really easy with barely any enemies dropped. I knew those types would give me a proper crack at the final boss, Bugs Bunny and his deadly UFO(?).
But here’s the thing, it’s quite broken but it’s still an enjoyable game. How rare is that? I’m not sure if there are different outcomes of the ending if you accumulate more money, but once you beat it you get a password that let’s you restart with 49 hearts. It’s def replay worthy and I plan on playing it again while trying to kill twenty minutes. It’s a weird-ass game that should be spoken more about.
Rick V helps organize Yokoi Kids and does punk things. Check him out. itsmerickv.com
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