Battle Of The Beards
- Brand
- Duck Dynasty
- Year
- 2013
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Mini-Games
- Platform
- App
- Agency
- RED Interactive Agency
Objective
A&E wanted to keep Duck Dynasty's fans engaged between broadcasts and give the show — marketed as the official mobile game of America's #1 reality series — a life on phones and tablets. The pitch was to let fans live out the Robertsons' daily routine through play, built around the cast's own likenesses and lines, and to spread further as players shared their own avatars and in-game photos on Facebook.
Solution
Players start by building a personal avatar — a clean-cut "yuppie" — then work through a rapid-fire run of one-to-five-second challenges drawn from things the Robertsons actually do: aiming at ducks, calling them in, painting on a beard, chucking doughnuts. Each round resolves in a couple of seconds, pass or fail, and rolls straight into the next with no pause. Between bursts, players spend the experience and in-game cash they've racked up in a shop, growing out their avatar's beard and kitting them out in backwoods gear like a bandana and shades, while cast one-liners play in a "Beard Talk" segment to keep the show's voice in the mix. At any point, players can post their bearded avatar or a screenshot to Facebook.
- 1
The player opens the app into a character creator and builds a clean-cut "yuppie" avatar — short hair, white T-shirt, Bluetooth earpiece — then names it. This starting look is the "before" in the game's stated transformation into a bearded redneck.
- 2
From there the player enters a level built from a fast sequence of one-to-five-second microgames set in the Louisiana bayou, each explained by a single line of on-screen text.
- 3
Several microgames run on quick tapping and sorting: the player taps appearing squirrels, frogs, and ducks before time runs out, or separates two lookalike falling items (cherries and animal droppings) without mixing them up.
- 4
Other microgames are small production tasks: assembling a duck call from its parts in the right order, or taping shut and routing boxes of duck calls down a conveyor belt.
- 5
A third group is single repeated-action challenges against the clock: painting a cast member's beard, feeding donuts or hot peppers into someone's mouth, eating chili as fast as possible, or blowing up a beaver dam.
- 6
Three failed microgames end the level early, and the player has to restart it from the beginning.
- 7
Clearing microgames earns score, experience, and in-game currency; the 15 starting levels increase in difficulty, and later ones require flawless runs to pass.
- 8
The player spends earned currency to advance the avatar's look — growing a beard, changing the hairstyle, adding a bandana and sunglasses — and to unlock voiced one-liners and "life advice" from the show's cast in the Beard Talk section.
- 9
Currency can also be bought with real money on top of the app's own price, letting players speed up progress.
- 10
Players can post their finished avatar and in-game photos to Facebook.
