Next time, stay indoors

As someone who generally tries to stay away from people that I don’t know, Introvert Quest seemed to be a great idea. Take someone who hides from the rest of humanity, throw them in the real word, add some humor for flavouring, and you have what should be a successful game that pokes fun of those who play it. If you make it into a role-playing game, then you will draw in even more people, even make some extroverted fans along the way! Unfortunately, Introvert Quest failed in making any real sort of impression, besides feeling bad for those who have to suffer through the game.

Introvert Quest focuses on Bryce, a lonely, lazy male who doesn’t even bother to go and get his own groceries. This introverted lad is forced by his psychologist into traveling the world around him and buying his own food, getting a pet so that he has something to love, and generally become a more well-rounded person. Byrce, grumbling along the way, does his absolute best to comply with the therapist’s wishes and attempts to get out more often. A variety of characters are shown as the game continues, including Bryce’s annoying sister, a crazy environmentalist type who wants to kill the mayor, and what I assume is supposed to be Bryce’s love interest. This is generally where I would at least mention their names, but Introvert Quest’s writing was so bland with remainder of the main cast, I couldn’t be bothered to remember their names. The only one whose name I can remember besides the main guy is Senor Cuck (I know its spelled “Señor, but if the game can’t be bothered to spell it correctly, neither will I) a cockfighting duck that is randomly thrust upon you when there are no other pets available. I remember this sad Senor Cuck as it was the only time I ever gave a chuckle during the main plot of this RPG.

While Introvert Quest has a good setup for the type of game it’s trying to be, the game is hampered by forgettable characters, a bland art style and worst of all, a story that failed to make me actually laugh – unforgivable for a game whose whole point is to make you laugh. the role-playing mechanics are generic at best. There’s absolutely nothing in the battling system that you haven’t seen a million times before. Both the standard and virtual battles (based off of a fictional free-to-pay mobile game) have just regular attacks, occasional special moves, and a finisher that builds up as the battle continues on. Its extremely standard, but it works, despite being extremely boring. At least battles are not at all common, limited to occasionally running into someone in the sewers or opting to battle a random passerby on the streets.

Can we take a moment to explicitly talk about spelling errors in games? While I can give a pass to a wide variety of games that may only have a couple spelling mistakes here and there (heck even I make some) but when at least one of every three lines has an easy to correct error throughout the entire game it’s hair pulling for the first few hours, and head bashing for every line of mistyped words after that. A few hours into the game, I decided to count just how many words were not spellchecked in a twenty minute span of the game, and I lost count after fifty. Come on. The art is pretty awful as well, with characters looking like bad MS Paint drawings doing JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure poses.

I have to applaud the designer’s decision to straight up advertise the rest of their games during a mandatory part of the story line. For some reason, Bryce is asked to make a speech during a gaming convention, and lo’ and behold the games offered to the character are the same games that the studio has made or are currently making. I pulled up the company’s website and sure enough, next to Introvert Quest is the exact game that is advertised in Introvert Quest. If this was a joke on the developer’s side, I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry at the sheer audacity of them putting it in.

I do have to give credit for the soundtrack that Introvert Quest offers. The city’s theme and some other parts that play work extremely well for the genre, and some of the chiptunes had me shaking my head for reasons other than sighing at the dialogue.  In a better game, this music would be listened to a good amount more, but sadly, this isn’t the case.

In a better world, Introvert Quest could have been a great time that poked fun of the very people who would pick it up. However, with a mediocre story riddled with errors, characters that don’t leave any sort of impression, and a functional-but-boring battling system, Introvert Quest fails at almost every step of the way. At the end of this slogging quest to find something good in this Earth, I have decided to just hole up in my house myself, become a pasty hermit, and never venture out again so I can avoid doing something like playing Introvert Quest again.

Final Verdict: 2/5

Available on: PC (reviewed); Publisher: Amaterasu Software; Developer: Amaterasu Software; Players: 1 ; Released: March 15, 2017 ; ESRB: M for Mature ; MSRP: $4.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a Steam review copy of Introvert Quest given to HeyPoorPlayer by the publisher