Tuesday, June 04, 2013

DLC Quest: completed!

A quirky and charming little puzzle platform game, DLC Quest is intended as a satirical look at the way that console games have been progressing, with ever-more content locked away.  The game sees you collecting coins in order to pay the shopkeeper for items such as the ability to move left, or animation of your character.  As much of the humour is in the writing, I've hidden the rest of this post on its own page.

The only thing you can do to start with is move left, collecting four coins and reaching the shopkeeper.  The only thing you can buy for four coins is the ability to move left, which is lucky ...


I initially thought that my computer wasn't working that well, as the sound stopped working after I moved my character.  Once I looked at the rest of the DLC list, however, I found out this wasn't a mistake.


It took a bit of exploration to find enough coins to buy the audio pack, the animation pack and the pause menu.  The first achievement (or "awardment") recognised this.


After the initial stages, the game settled into a Metroid-style exploration game, where you need to collect coins in order to buy new abilities from the shopkeeper - like a map to get past the forest, a double jump, or a way to sharpen a sword.  It was here that the quality of the writing started to shine.  Meeting random characters with little to add to the game was amusing, and seeing increasing amounts of pointless DLC to buy with an excess of coins helped the satire.






I was amused that one of the DLC packs was for horse armour - one of the classic first uses of microtransactions.  I was more amused when it was needed to complete the game - at least, completing the game properly (after buying the DLC for the actual ending).





After getting the good ending, there were a couple of achievements outstanding - buying all DLC, and killing all characters and sheep.  It took me a little while to find the last sheep, and I killed the shepherd last.




A short and fun game, which was very amusing.  I think I paid around 75p for it, and it may have worked better as a satire if that amount had been collected while playing in bits and pieces - though I'm not sure if I'd actually have played to the end if that were the case, no matter how small the amounts.

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