Charlie The Duck is a 1996 shareware Mario-like Platform Game for DOS/PC made by Wiering Software in which you control a duck named Charlie. Each world in the game has three levels and a boss. The game and its 2001 sequel have a free trial available. There's also a flash version with different levels.
General tropes:
- 1-Up: The Egg item gives you an extralife.
- Bee Afraid: Bees appear as recurring flying enemies.
- Combos: Stomp various enemies without touching the floor or hit many of them while invincible to get bonus points.
- Crate Expectations: Crates contain coins, cystals and eggs.
- Goomba Springboard: It seems to work differently in the sequel.
- Goomba Stomp: How you kill enemies, as usual for the genre.
- Heart Container: The hidden Super Hearts.
- Hit Points: Charlie starts only with three hit points.
- Invincibility Power-Up: The Shield item gives Charlie a temporary invincibility.
- Nintendo Hard
- No Plot? No Problem!: The game lacks any sort of substational plot, not even in the form of Excuse Plot. Doesn't make the game any less fun.
- Shareware Game
- The Goomba: Expies of the Trope Namer appear as recurring default enemies.
- The Spiny: Spiked fishes cannot be jumped on.
Charlie The Duck tropes:
- Bottomless Pits: Pits with no bottom frequently appear as obstacles in the game.
- King Mook: The first boss is a big version of the red fish enemy.
- Level Goal: A Sign like the ones from Sonic games.
- Timed Mission
Charlie II tropes:
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: You must collect at least 60% of the items in a stage to unlock the exits.
- Have a Nice Death: Each level and boss song has a death jingle.
- No Ending, A Winner Is You: Don't expect more than a wall of text for the ending.
- Recurring Boss: The boss is always the same robot with balls orbiting it, but with new attacks.
- Secret Level: Find the secret exits to enter them.
- Spikes of Doom: Spikes kill Charlie in a single hit. What's annoying is that you often have to fall on holes to find items, but you can't know for sure if there are or not any spikes down there until you drop.
- Springs, Springs Everywhere: A recurring gimmick.