Dummy Duck! II
Release type: Shareware
Release date: May 10, 1996
Levels: 9
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: Dummy Duck
Related games: Off the Page, Dummy Duck 3, DD4, Dummy Duck 5, Dummy Duck 7
Deeper than his yen for games squirms Alan Caudel's love for cartoons. Dummy Duck was first a comic strip, and Caudel planned the original game on paper long before he had the tools to implement it. Basically, the games are great, but the drawing comes first.
Indeed, Caudel's Game-Maker work grew slowly. His first year brought three games. Year two, another two -- and that's including his yearly gift for Adam Tyner. Things picked up in 1994, with five new experiments, each in a different genre.
And then, in August 1994, David Perry released Earthworm Jim, a side-scrolling platformer distinguished by its slapstick humor and Termite Terrace style hand-drawn sprites. This is the game that even today defines Perry's legacy, and clearly Alan took its lessons to heart.
Four months after Perry's opus, Caudel designed Adam's B-Day 3, which wears its Perry influence on its sleeve. Three months from there, it's Lil' Choklit Donit Man, which forgoes sleeves in favor of a full-body tattoo. Somewhere in there, Caudel also whacked together a certain Mr. Berkel Derkel!, which defies easy description outside of its influence.
There's a logic to this progression, that you'll see mirrored throughout Caudel's work. He doesn't just leap into a new project; first, he sketches. He tries out all of the techniques he'll use, both technically and stylistically. These one-off oddities, they're not random. They're drafts, to prepare for a larger work. Namely, Dummy Duck! II.
As the shift in title suggests, the second Dummy Duck game is a big departure from its predecessor, Off the Page, and much more of the standard for future Dummy Duck games. Think of it as the Pat Troughton to Off the Page's Bill Hartnell. It's less experimental, but more focused. It's less ambitious, but far more advanced. It's funnier, it's more accessible, and its quality is more variable. But above all, it's more definitive.
This second venture, produced with three years of hindsight, demonstrates a big upgrade in its animation and the first of many changes in character design. The new Dummy resembles a Chuck Jones-era Daffy Duck, and is elastic enough for extreme takes as needed. The backgrounds too are stylized in full "Duck Amuck" splendor, while the game's props (anvils, S'Good missiles, etc.) owe a weighty bill to the Acme Corporation. The jumping and attacking is much more in line with top-level Game-Maker platforms. The game as a whole serves as a showcase for Caudel's improved familiarity with RSD's engine.
And, it is gorgeous.
So cosmetically, tonally, and mechanically Dummy Duck! II is everything Caudel seems to have wanted from the first game. But, there is a trade-off to discuss. What we gain in a consistent tone and set of mechanics, we lose in carefully constructed setpieces and clearly framed action sequences. Indeed, once you get past its presentation, the substance of the game seems like a relative afterthought.
Dummy Duck! II is structured as a stream-of-consciousness. It's full of great, or at least kind of interesting, ideas (e.g., Virtual Boy Land), that appear then whiz past, unlikely to appear again in the same form. Levels start and end, and then possibly later return, with little clear reason or purpose. There's not much in the way of coherent architecture or narrative or thematic glue to the game, except in the style and quality of its production. The experience of playing, then, is a possibly intentional meander through dadaism.
One level you're flying a space ship, just because. The next level we're back in the same place as the first level, except wearing a disco outfit. Just because. The level numbers are non-sequential. Just because. There's a pseudo AM2-style sprite scaler level called "Flume of Doom" just because it's fun to say. Surrealism plays a big part in Caudel's humor, and helps to explain the game's inexplicable progression, though whereas later games in this series take pains to frame their weirdness, Dummy Duck! II just flips the channels at will.
So in broad strokes we have a sense of random chaos. Also at any given moment, the game is close to merciless with the player, with unfettered threats and more deliberate traps dotting the maps like crumbs on the carpet in front of the TV. So it's chaos at every point of focus: tough and convoluted. A patient player can work out what the game is doing, and find a way to play through and with the chaos, but it's all rather difficult, and the main draw in doing so is that the game is just so attractive and so unpredictable that it makes the player curious what could happen next.
If Off the Page serves as an initial thesis for Alan Caudel's work with Game-Maker, Dummy Duck II serves to define that work. It's cultured, yet studiously inelegant; it's one of his most finished works, yet highly unfinished. It's charismatic, yet formidable. It also, along with its first sequel, is one of Caudel's most public, widely distributed games.
There are better Dummies to come, but perhaps none as pure in its anarchy.
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| Off the Page | Dummy Duck II | Dummy Duck 3 |
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Contents
Story[edit]
Umm... okay, this whole thing was made up in Dummy's imagination. It's like an interactive dream. It shows his thoughts, his dreams, his hopes, his fears, and also his corn!
There's no real point, except to go into any doors that you see. You'll know when you've won I'm sure.
Instructions[edit]
Controls[edit]
Use the numeric keypad to control all Dummies, and the space ship!
Numeric Keypad Instructions: (If you can't figure 'em out by yourself, you shouldn't be playing!)
up-left up up-Rt
7 8 9
\ ^ /
left 4 < > 6 Right
/ v \
1 2 3
Dn-Left Down Dn-Rt
Each Dummy can throw exploding cookies by pressing "SPACE". He throws s'good missles (not scud missles!) by pressing "M". Holding "R" makes him run (I REEEALY LOVE this effect that I did with the clouds behind him! It's incredibly cool!"
Cosmo Dummy's space ship is controlled thusly:
- Press "D" for Destruction Gun (you have a limited supply, so use sparingly, and pick up the red "FUEL" cans often!)
- Hold down "C" for cloaking (You can't move, but you can hold it down as long as you like, unlike teleporting)
- Press "T" for teleporting (You move to another area automatically, but you have no control of where)
- Hold "R" for rockets
- Press "SPACE" for your Sucky Laser Gun (You can't run out, but in order to control where it goes, you must be pointing towards the enemies)
The Stage is Set[edit]
(the levels so far)
Normal Dummy walks around in some uncharted territory that really has no point. Cosmo Dummy appears in two levels, (Once in the unregistered version) once in a space ship (is that two words?) and once in some weird unfinished map I made. (Find the secret Tunnel of MYSTERY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Disco Duck Makes An Appearance! Wahoo! He comes from a long series of unfinished comics by my friend Adam Tyner!
Keep in mind that this is only around HALF of what's really in the game. It's not hard to register! Y'ALL HAVE FUN NOW!
Version 1.2[edit]
UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've added a CGA Heck level, a Flume of Doom level, and a Virtua Dummy level (oh BOY)! FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN!!!
(Virtua Dummy isn't in this version! Now you MUST register! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!)
Credits[edit]
Every last stinkin' pixel in this whole game was expertly rendered by Alan Caudel!
Also thanks to Game-Maker!
Dummy Duck is copyright Alan Caudel!
Visit my homepage!
e-mail me!
Tell me what you think! I'd really love to hear form you!
Thanks!
- Alan!
Background[edit]
I think that Dummy Duck 2 was far less planned out [than Off the Page] because I figured, "What's the point of planning things if I'm just gonna find out I can't do them!" Instead with Dummy 2, I think I just said, "Let me see what I can do, and try to make that work!"
I'm not sure if there was ever a definitive version of Dummy 2. With most of my projects, I just kept adding more stuff until I turned my attention to a new project.
The spaceship level [...] there's so many things wrong with that level. It's too hard to early in the game. There's absolutely no way to know where to go. And the aliens immediately attack when you get anywhere near them.— Alan Caudel, email exchange, October 19-31, 2016
Availability[edit]
This game was published to the On Target Programming Web site, as well as to Alan Caudel's personal page.
Also available on several shareware compilation CD-ROMs, including Global Star's 100 Action Arcade Games (January, 2000).
Archive History[edit]
On October 20, 2010, Caudel posted a comment to a YouTube video of Peach the Lobster, under the name dummyduckrulz; following up the conversation, on June 29, 2011 he provided a link to a collection of games recently uncovered by Adam Tyner. This initial archive included:
Links[edit]
Sites[edit]
Articles[edit]
- The Game-Maker Story: Infoboxes (Gamasutra)
Other Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Dummy Duck II (321 kB)
- Dummy Duck II (unregistered) (337 kB)
- Dummy Duck II Windows icon set (3.7 kB)
- Difficulty Select map (7 kB)
- Levels 1, 4-5 map (22 kB)
- Level 2 map (83 kB)
- Level 3 map (48 kB)
- Level 6 map (16 kB)
- Level 7 map (35 kB)
- Level 8 map (10 kB)
- Level 9 map (5 kB)
- Corn map (7 kB)
- Ending map (29 kB)
