I was fighting a multi-coloured butterfly in a swamp, firing off shotgun blasts that were actually scatter-shot bubbles, whittling down its health in a reluctant battle against beauty. Eventually, it started to sweat and dance around the arena with an empty boss bar—I’d won, but there was more. I had to whip out my lasso and circle it, all the while it fired panic-stricken pellets of its own in a frantic last-ditch effort. Then suddenly I was on the boss’ back, and we were fighting side-by-side.
Patch Quest is a play on thedungeon crawlerroguelite, centring you in the middle with an empty, limbo space where all you have is your home. Each direction takes you back into the dungeon through different biomes, but all of them loop together and expand into more hazardous areas, each of which houses bosses, small mini-dungeons, and treasure. The idea is to chart everything you find across this labyrinth of discoveries and slowly build up your home with new patches and fauna, even bringing back bosses and critters you find on your journey.
RELATED:What Exactly Is Enhance’s Humanity Trying To Tell Us?
These dungeons are styled on old 2DZeldagames andThe Binding of Isaac, while our weapon is a blaster that can be modified by different fruits, making it fire rapidly, in bursts, or just so that the pellets arehuge. That’s a fairly standard mechanic that serves a lot like upgrading your tears in Isaac, but the unique hook comes when you get a mount. Enemies aren’t just roadblocks that you have to push through to reach the finish line, you can use your lasso to tame them, riding into the next battle with all of their abilities on your side. Now you have the bog-standard blaster and the enemy you were just fighting, all controlled by you.
There’s far less RNG because you know what biome houses what critters, and where each boss is, so you always know where to get your favourite abilities. It sounds like a breath of fresh air, but it strips away the randomness that makes roguelites so much fun to return to time and time again. Take that away and each run becomes more stale and predictable than the last, since boxing yourself into a challenge is more of a conscious decision than luck of the draw. If I choose not to venture into the forest to get my favourite early game critters, that’s on me, but likewise, I know that if I head straight to the spider den and fight the boss, I can get some incredible abilities quickly. Why wouldn’t I?
InHades, runs form around whatever Gods crop up, meaning you have to design your build on the fly. There’s a huge risk to that, since you may pick abilities you know synergise with others, only to never find those others, but that’s all part of the challenge. Having a cocktail of random abilities you’ve picked up like you’re in a Greek pantheon Easter Egg hunt ensures that each and every run will feel and play differently, while in Patch Quest, you’ll always be taming the same critters and following the same set out paths. It’s a rogue-lite with less RNG, which is like a shooter with fewer guns.
Throughout Patch Quest, you’re incentivised to explore and document the fauna, architecture, and creatures with the promise of levelling up and growing your home. However, your home stays exactly the same. The only change is that a bunch of random bits and bobs you’ve found will be haphazardly scattered outside. you may move the plants around, but that doesn’t amount to much more than a tidy garden. There’s no real reason to stick around given how little personalisation there is, completely upending that original incentive.
Compared to last year’s Cult of the Lamb,another roguelite with a hub in the middle of it all, it feels empty. Between runs, you’re thrown back to base, but your base is nothing more than a bunch of meandering enemies you’re able to’t kill and a few plants you’ve picked up along the way. You can’t enter the home, and decorating is incredibly limited. Ultimately, the hub is the place you want to get out of as fast as possible, the junction between biomes.
Patch Quest is a novel dungeon crawling rogue-lite that has unique ideas which set it apart from some of the most noteworthy in the genre. However, it quickly becomes repetitive, with a huge, sprawling dungeon full of discoveries to be made that leave little impact on the world back home, turning it into an adventure that soon becomes aimless and disjointed.
Score: 3/5. A PC code was provided by the publisher.
Next:Fallout Creators On Creating A Hopeful Dystopia In The Outer Worlds
