Message Quest Review

Tell me, and be honest: are you lazy? How can you say “no”? Aren’t you at all enticed by the idea of lounging around on a weekday, scrolling through countless pages of the Internet, among which, let’s be audacious, our website might just pop up? Ah, there you have it, you’ve been caught! But that’s alright, we completely understand. So, we’re offering a thematic entertainment entirely dedicated to our shared vice. The recently debuted “Message Quest” is a game about the lazy and, of course, for the lazy.

More precisely, it’s a fairy tale. Its hero, Festus, loves to sleep and eat. Simple hobbies don’t go well with the service in the Order of Messengers, but it doesn’t bother him as long as there are a couple of sacks in the pantry where he can comfortably settle down and eat the sandwich he found in the corner. In general, it’s not life, but a dream, which, however, is suddenly shattered by an evil boss – you see, the world is in danger, there’s no one else to harness, everything is bad, it’s time to work and blah-blah-blah. He also throws threats and calls him a slacker! He himself, I bet, is no better – he can’t even deliver a piece of paper…

In the pantry, the Order seems to carefully store references.

You must have already understood that the perspective of this story is unusual. Feste is one of those messengers whose role is usually limited to delivering a distress signal to the knights in shining armor, who then do all the glorious work. Despite the fact that such intermediation is considered half of a feat, he is not paid any attention at all. Message Quest, on the other hand, shifts priorities and turns the backstage process into an independent adventure, no less worthy and interesting.

The plot, however, does not draw deep thoughts from the bottom and does not hide insane intrigue, everything is childishly naive, obvious, and modest. The main moral is heavily emphasized here, the characters’ personalities are easily predictable, and the denouement is outlined in general terms – but you didn’t expect a different approach from a fairy tale, did you?

The presentation is much more important, and it decides everything here. The narrative is permeated with warm irony and wonderful humor, the flow of which never stops for a minute. To even greater happiness, Message Quest was made by our compatriots, so the jokes in the game, um, are close in spirit, so to speak. The native mentality and stylistics make you giggle even at dialogues with the “uncle-door,” who is “actually an aunt,” and against the backdrop of ubiquitous Western comedy, they look fresh and unconventional.

The gameplay, essentially, is also parodic. The player is often directly addressed to click on one of the characters or drag the stubborn Feste to another location. The conversations are interactive from both sides, and not in the name of some kind of Nonlinearity™ – Additional dialogues serve more as miniature jokes to maintain the mood. A couple of times boss battles are inserted, probably inspired by South Park: The Stick of Truth with its caricature of Japanese RPGs. The rest of the time is occupied by simple puzzles like “assemble one and a half puzzle pieces into a picture”.

So don’t get too excited too soon: the word “Quest” in the title is precisely from the “for lazy people” part – it is by no means a quest with all the necessary attributes like inventory and intricate riddles. Each scene is completed literally in a couple of clicks and provides a challenge at the level of tablet adventures, where the active point is always one and is blown up to approximately the size of the screen. Veterans will undoubtedly cry out about the mockery of a dying genre (and they will, for the most part, be right), but the authors initially intended to make “Hamlet, But not Hamlet”. In such projects, as it is known, there is nothing to play.

On the other hand, Message Quest offers a dense and compact action. Even if it takes about two hours to complete in the worst case scenario, this time is filled with exclusively light impressions, unburdened by “stumbling blocks” on complex tasks. And, by the way, it is beautifully designed: stained glass painting with spontaneous anime inserts looks bright and original, while managing not to overload the picture. This is enough to enjoy using the game as an alternative to, let’s say, a cartoon.

The moralizing battle is in full swing. Oh, if only life were like that…

But if we nitpick, we can point out the not very successful font, which for some reason differs greatly from the one shown in the screenshots in the store. It’s a small detail, of course, but the current one doesn’t really harmonize with the rest of the interface components. It also doesn’t go well with the beautiful Russian language, with the word “cooldown” used somewhere in the heat of battle. Well, never mind.

It’s not possible to recommend the little story of little Feste to everyone, it all depends on how much of a powerful gaming component you expect from it. Some may find it lacking, some may find it too easy, while others will be satisfied with the infectious atmosphere of friendliness and fun. Although, considering the price of the game, the loss will not be fatal in any case.