Quickly Quackley! caught my attention thanks to its unique look. Being Being from the United States, I have no connection to, or have ever seen in person, a ZX Spectrum. In my adult life I’ve come to understand the 8-bit machine that ruled the UK when we were playing DOS games and the massively popular NES. So, when Quickly Quackley! popped up I snapped at the chance to get my hands on a new game that looks ripped right out of the United Kingdom circa 1984.
Quickly, Quackley! is a fast-paced 2D precision platformer in the vain of Super Meat Boy but with a distinctly 80’s aesthetic. You take the role of a duck that is late for a job interview and has only 13 seconds before they are late and lose out. To get there you must jump, dash and stomp through 48 levels in 13 seconds or less. You can jump and dash at a breakneck pace, jumping off wall and sliding past dangers that are keeping you from reaching your interview.
It’s a simple premise that really shines thanks to that ZX Spectrum aesthetic. Stripping back all the fancy graphics leaves you with a sole focus on the gameplay. That might not have been great if Quickly, Quackley! played like an old ZX Spectrum game as they were really slow and tended to be Atari-like fun. By that I mean that they were lots of fun for about five minutes or less. The precision-platform route open up the game and sucked me into the experience, tackling the 48 levels about 10 at a time.
I don’t even normally like these types of games as I’ve stated in the past, but it does look like I am slowly coming around. Hell, I even liked playing the game with the old TV filter, something that my fellow writers while never let me live down. But more than the base game are the extra features including a ‘Speedrun’ mode with an in-game timer for the Twitch spreedrun community, a ‘Practice’ mode to familiarize yourself with each level (thank you developer gods, and a ‘Time Trial’ mode to push yourself to the limit.
It’s been a little while since I played a game that is solely focused on the gameplay fun. Sure, there is a story here, but it’s not important and I would have probably liked it better if there weren’t any cutscenes as they sort of take me out of the fast-paced action that is so good. That, and the fact that the cutscenes are all in black and white, something that really sucks when the color limitations of the ZX Spectrum made the colors it did have pop.
Quickly, Quackley! is a great deal of fun and plays silky smooth. This is one title that you can feel the developers really enjoyed making and are proud of. Deaths are plenty but you never feel like the game cheats you. The game has this ability to frustrate you and keep you glued to the screen. You can see the pattern and path and getting just that little bit farther is incredibly rewarding.
At less than $5 on Steam, Quickly, Quackley! is a game that you should really take a chance on and in the process support quality developers. I know I’ll be getting back to having another go with Quickly Quackley! and tell everyone that will listen to pick up this super slick title. Here’s to hoping that Twitch streamers pick this one up and that some fresh blood gets the speedrun community pushing it to the limit.
Final Score:
Genre: Action
Developer: JXT
Publisher: Black Country Games
Release: Jun 9, 2021
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