Duck Life

Duck Life is a simple sports simulator in which the player raises a duck from scratch into a champion - training its running, swimming and flying through a series of short minigames, and using the money it earns to buy better gear and further training. The eventual goal is to enter the duck in a race against rivals and win through balanced development of all three disciplines, not just one skill trained to excess. The player has to plan how many training sessions to spend on which discipline, since focusing too heavily on just one may not pay off in a race against evenly matched opponents.

The principle of gradual improvement and visible progress - the duck literally runs faster and swims farther the more time the player invests in it - made the game one of the most accessible representatives of training simulators on Flash portals in 2009. The graphics are cute and cartoonish, aimed more at younger or casual players, and the individual minigames are short and easy to understand even without instructions. The duck also visibly reacts to every day of training, giving the player clear feedback that their time with the game wasn't wasted.

It was created by studio Wix Games, and thanks to its huge popularity among younger players it received several sequels with new disciplines and settings. Duck Life belongs to the titles that showed how well a simple training cycle combined with a cute character can work even without more complex game mechanics. Plenty of kids and casual players got their first taste of the gradual character-building typical of larger RPG titles through Duck Life.

Why play it: A great choice for younger players or moments of relaxation, when it's enough to watch the duck gradually improve without having to think too hard.