Deep Diver

Deep Diver is a breath-holding foraging game about the ducks that feed under water. Hold to dive, steer to the food, let go to float back up, and surface before your breath runs out. Seven stages follow seven real species, from a duck that does not dive for its food to the duck reported to dive deepest, and each one opens with a fact about how that bird really feeds.

The stages are not a ranking of how deep each bird dives — the fact on each stage card gives the real figure — but they do run from a duck that does not dive to the one reported to dive deepest. The idea comes from a real split in the duck world. Most familiar ducks are dabblers: they feed at the surface or tip forward to reach just below it. Diving ducks go right under and swim down to their food. Quackoria’s guide to dabbling vs diving ducks explains how to tell the two groups apart; this game lets you feel the difference.

Stage one is a duck that does not dive

The first stage is a Mallard, and holding the dive control only tips it forward a short way. That is deliberate. Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds says of the Mallard: “They don’t dive, but dabble to feed, tipping forward in the water to eat seeds and aquatic vegetation.” The Mallard’s food is all in the shallow band it can reach. From stage two onwards the ducks are true divers, and the water is deeper than on the Mallard’s stage.

The seven species

• Mallard — a dabbler: it tips forward to feed rather than diving.
• Bufflehead — a small, quick diver. All About Birds notes that Buffleheads typically swallow their food while still under water, and that their dives average about 12 seconds.
• Tufted Duck — dives for molluscs such as mussels, clams and snails, commonly to depths that All About Birds gives as about 10–46 feet (about 3–14 m).
• Common Goldeneye — All About Birds says it feeds mainly in water less than 13 feet (4 m) deep but will sometimes forage in water more than 20 feet (over 6 m) deep, and its dives last up to a minute.
• Greater Scaup — can dive to about 23 feet (about 7 m), though it usually feeds in water less than 7 feet deep, on molluscs, insects, crustaceans and aquatic plants (All About Birds).
• Hooded Merganser — hunts small fish, crayfish and aquatic insects. All About Birds describes its “slender, serrated bills to grasp their prey” and eyes adapted to seeing under water. On this stage the food swims.
• Long-tailed Duck — reported to be the deepest diver. Audubon notes that most of its feeding is within 30 feet of the surface but that it is “supposedly able to dive more than 200 ft, deeper than any other duck,” and All About Birds says it can swim down as deep as 200 feet and spends three or four times as long under water as on the surface.

What the numbers in the game mean

The species facts above are real and sourced. The numbers inside the game are game design: the breath meter’s length, how fast the duck sinks, rises and swims, the depth scale drawn beside the water, the points each food is worth and each stage’s target. Each duck’s breath meter is set for its own stage’s water, and the deepest water, on the Long-tailed Duck’s stage, comes with the longest breath; but the in-game depths are scaled for play, not measured. In the game, breath also drains faster the deeper the duck goes, so deep food is worth the trip only when you plan the dive.

How to play

Each stage shows a food target. Food is eaten the moment the duck touches it — no carrying it back to the surface — and deeper food is worth more points, except on the Mallard’s stage, where all the food is in one shallow band and worth 10 each, and on the Hooded Merganser’s stage, where every fish is worth the same. When the banked food reaches the target, the stage is cleared, and you earn a bonus for the lives you still have and the breath you have left.

You have three lives. Running out of breath under water costs one, and so does touching an obstacle: a drifting jellyfish, a patrolling pike, or, on the Long-tailed Duck’s stage, ice floes at the surface. After losing a life the duck flashes for a moment and cannot be hit again straight away. Lose all three and the run ends; you can carry on from the deepest stage you reached, with a new score, or start again from the Mallard.

Every stage has been checked so that all of its food can be reached in a single breath from the surface, and its target can be met with food to spare.

Keep learning

To put names to the diving ducks you see, try which wild duck did I see, or read about two of the divers from the game, the Tufted Duck and the Canvasback.

Sources

Species facts: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds — Mallard, Bufflehead, Tufted Duck, Common Goldeneye, Greater Scaup, Hooded Merganser and Long-tailed Duck; National Audubon Society, Long-tailed Duck field guide; Ducks Unlimited, waterfowl feeding adaptations. Metric depths are converted from the feet given by the sources.

About the game

Deep Diver is an original Quackoria game about the ducks that feed under water. Its seven stages follow seven real species, starting with a Mallard, which dabbles rather than dives, and ending with the Long-tailed Duck, reported to be the deepest-diving duck.

Each species fact comes from Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds or the National Audubon Society and is linked on this page. The numbers inside the game are game design: the breath meter, sinking and swimming speeds, the depth scale, the points for each food and each stage's target. Every stage was checked so that all of its food can be reached in one breath and its target met.

Your best score is kept in this browser. The Quackoria player also receives the score shown above the game; nothing is posted to a public leaderboard or attached to an account.