Ducklings Game

Ducklings drops you into a lake full of stray baby ducks and gives you one job: get them home. You paddle around the water as a mother duck, and every duckling you swim near falls in line behind you, forming a little chain that follows wherever you go. Waddle back to your nest to drop them off and your family grows — but the lake isn't empty, and neither is the water safe.

players are doing the exact same thing, and a stray duckling floating between two nests is fair game for whoever reaches it first. Worse, if another duck rams your trailing line, it can steal ducklings right off the back of your chain, so the run home is never as safe as the swim out. Boats cut across the lake too, and getting hit by one ends your run on the spot, so route-planning around traffic matters as much as spotting the ducklings themselves.

Controls

Mouse or keyboard to steer, with arrow keys or a joypad as an alternative — point your duck toward open water or your nest and go.

Tips

• Grab ducklings on the outer edges of the lake first — they're less contested than ones floating near the middle where every player passes through.
• Keep an eye behind you on the swim home; a longer chain of ducklings is a bigger target for players to snatch from.
• Watch boat routes before committing to a long dash across open water.

A good pick for short, replayable sessions — each trip out and back only takes a minute or two, but the risk of losing ducklings to a rival or a boat keeps every run tense.