Gamer reviews for The Quest Keeper

The Quest Keeper

Help the poor Peasant Boy conquer the dungeons laid out before him by the Quest Keeper. The Quest Keeper can be downloaded for free on both Android and iOS platforms. In-App purchases are present but aren't really needed because it defeats the purpose of the game. You can buy gold coins, which is the currency that you earn throughout the game, but nothing in the game really costs THAT much to warrant purchasing gold. Unfortunately there are ads in the game and they are quite intrusive in that they take up the whole screen and you are switched out of the game which then in turn most likely will lag your game. But this frustration you get when you die because of the game lagging is lessened by a compensation--there is a choice to gain a few coins by watching ads. You can pay to remove the ads if they really get in the way of your gameplay.

The objective of the game is to guide the Peasant Boy around the ever-changing dungeon that the Quest Keeper has you go through. You guide him (by default) by swiping left, right, up, or down. But the catch is that he cannot stop. He can stop if you run him into non-lethal obstacles like a block or a chest for example. But aside from that, he runs continuously even if he falls into his doom, gets impaled by a spike, or gets sliced in half by a circular saw. Those are among the few things that can kill you in the dungeons. Your objective is to collect coins to further strengthen your little Peasant Boy.

The coins you amass are spent on revives if you ever should die and you have activated a revive block. The cost grows the further in you are in the dungeon. But they are more prominently used in buying equipment for your Peasant Boy. You can change his torch, his garb, or his shoes. Each of these upgrades or purchases has their respective prices and give a different effect. Some effects are cosmetic like the bear or pig costumes. But some actually do something. To cite some examples, instead of carrying a torch, you could carry a staff that automatically opens nearby gates. Negating the need to attempt to press a (sometimes) difficult to reach button that is located in a hazardous place. Different clothing gives different resistances like getting hit by spikes take only half a heart. Meaning instead of outright killing you, you live through it. But in my opinion, the most useful upgrades are found in the shoes section. One reasonably easy-to-get footwear is the one that lets you jump over one block wide gaps. This drastically changes the way you see your path since after obtaining it, you see those gaps as possible routes and, rarely, you may see a chest that only has one way to reach it--across a one square gap. Unfortunately I didn't have the upgrade yet then. Other footwear allow you to also move slowly or move one square at a time although they are expensive.

There are also other quests you can buy that aren't infinite and completing one gives you an artifact. Gaining these artifacts gives you more health to survive the various traps that hurt you. Previously, it was mentioned that the game compensates you if you die due to the game lagging. What it does is quite good in my opinion and more game designers should do this. If the game detects you lagged and got killed for it, it will message you and apologize for it by giving you one free revive. So activate those revive blocks often. Truly a nice move by the developers. Although I wish they had an auto pause feature that activates if the low battery warning pops up. I died a few times because I fell into a pit because of the low batter window popping up.

The graphics used here is a pretty simple version of 3D blocks. Similar to games like Minecraft. It is rather cute and the colors are nice too. It runs smoothly at a rate of 60fps. But has an option to lower the graphical quality and run it at 30fps to improve performance. The sound is simple and it fits the atmosphere well. The background music is just silent enough not to be distracting and the objects around you are the ones making a lot of noise.

The Quest Keeper is a fine game that mixes dungeon crawling with a few puzzle elements that come in the form of what path you should take. It is simple but also surprisingly well put together. The difficulty is just right and it scales the further in you go. So you can't really get over confident (unless you got the shoes that let you move one square at a time).