Patch Quest Review

Patch Quest is a unique game as it combines a variety of genres to create a new experience, like how a quilt is created by sewing together numerous patches. This is a twin-stick shooter, combined with a monster capture game and a roguelike with tons of exploration and collecting. Patch Quest is developed by Lychee Game Labs and published by Curve Games, it has taken the last seven years to perfect and after being in early release, it is now finally ready to be released on the 2nd of March 2023.

Patch Quest has a whimsical hand-drawn look that is super cute and full of personality. As soon as the game starts you get to customise the appearance of your explorer by selecting their skin colour, if you want to play as a male or female, their hairstyle with a variety of shorter and longer styles, the hair colour, eye shape, and their nose and mouth shapes. This reminded me of creating my Mii character on the Nintendo Wii years ago.

Once your character is created you select the type of controller that you are using. This way Patch Quest adapts all the game commands to the correct buttons for your input device. Every time you start playing, the game will ask you just in case you end up using something different. While exploring, the buttons for attacks that the creature you are riding can do are shown on the right-hand side of the screen for quick reference in case you can’t remember which button is for which move.

The world in Patch Quest is made of “millions” of patches stitched together, there was a huge storm and in the calamity, the thread holding these pieces was being ripped apart. The explorers guild has to find all these pieces and pin them back together to make the world whole again. This is your first day on the job and you are dropped into the jungle, but fortunately, you aren’t alone. Your explorer is given a robotic backpack named PAC. This talking backpack will teach you everything that you need to know to survive on this unexplored island. The first task is to set up a Base Camp where your Shrinktek Tent is set up, this will be where you return after a quest, at night, or if you fall in battle. If you are defeated you will keep any levels or items that you have found, you will just have to start again from the base. Your game will be saved when you respawn so everything you discovered will be there for your next attempt. Each time this happens, the patches in the world are shuffled, so each time you go out will never be the same twice.

As soon as your camp is set up, PAC teaches you how to use a lasso to capture creatures that you can ride and attack with as you explore. These creatures are based on real-life animals but modified a bit, like the Shrubhog — a hedgehog with a bristle coat that allows it to shoot quills at enemies, the Zirrel — a crazy squirrel with the scythe, or the Poislug — a poisonous slug. To lasso a monster, you just press the B button that swings your lasso around you to grab the beast that is in its path. To capture them, you will have to run around them in a full circle to fill the gauge displayed. If it happens to be a larger-than-normal creature you will have to circle around twice. If you are hit by an enemy or one of the various bullets flying at you while doing this, your lasso will detach and you will need to start over. 

Each monster or “mount” as they are called in the game, has its own skill that you can use to fight off the enemies that you encounter as you explore. You only have your mount for a limited amount of time, as they get tired after a while and they leave. At this point, you can bring out your lasso and grab another ride to help you out. Your explorer is also equipped with a Nutriblaster that you can use against the swarms of enemies — along with the attacks that your mount learns as they level up. There are numerous types of fruit that you find growing on the tiles that you can pick up to give your weapon special abilities like explosive shots, blast shots, or homing bullets that will follow enemies around to hit them. PAC will give you an extensive list of quests for you to complete as you explore the island, so there is always something to do.

There are over 50 different creatures that you can ride around on, and you can also catch animals that you want to keep as pets at your Base Camp. Every time you are out on a quest you can only select one of these mounts to keep as a pet, but it won’t take long to get a large collection of animals to hang out by your place. As you explore you will come across plants that aren’t in PAC’s database, fortunately, they will give you a device that lets you capture these plants by shrinking them into small patch pins. These pins will be added to the database and show up at your base to decorate the tiles around it. You can also see all the mounts that you have been able to lasso and capture during your expeditions. If you are a completionist, it will definitely take a while to complete the full thing.

The other animals/creatures you destroy sometimes drop power-ups that you can use to strengthen your characters. There’s a variety of areas that you can improve in: riding, blasting, blocking, dodging, and afflicting. These all seem pretty obvious except for afflicting which controls how susceptible your explorer is to ailments in the environment. Some plants can make you dizzy if you walk through them affecting your aim, while others can make you itchy or sticky. If you see a plant that looks like it is sparkling it means that when hit, it will drop a power-up to improve one of your stats, so watch out for these while exploring.

There are four different paths around your base that lead to different areas in the world. At first, three of them are blocked off, so when you check the map you will see question marks placed there. You need to find a way to get to these areas and unblock the path so you are able to access it easily in the future. So you head down the only open route to the forest where you find three altars. They are radiating strange energy, but allow you to select a special charm to power you up and give you an ability for that run such as Alternator: Your Melee Blasts will increase your Charge Blast meter, Grazing: Collecting ammo from bushes restores some health and stamina, or Wax Guard: Your allied critters have extra health and can bounce off monsters. Each time you play there are new powers to select from, so it’s worth experimenting to figure out which type works best for you.

The world in Patch Quest is huge and made up of a variety of areas like forests, deserts, underwater areas, and hills to just name a few. You will find yourself on tiles with multiple waves of enemies firing at you. These moments truly feel like you are in a bullet-hell scenario, my advice is to keep moving and shooting to have a chance to take down all these enemy foes. To add to the challenge, each area has a main enemy to defeat to progress. The game definitely gets challenging at moments like this! Finding out which mounts you like to use the most and powering up their attacks definitely helps, some feel a lot more useful than others.

There is a huge variety of music in Patch Quest, as it felt like every time I used a different creature for a mount the song would change. I haven’t discovered all the creatures yet, but it was nice to switch up the music. I never got tired of any of the upbeat songs that I heard! The sound effects are great, especially when I was in areas like the forest where you can hear a variety of birds chirping and crickets or cicadas in the background. These sounds make it feel like you are travelling through distinct areas instead of everything sounding the same.

There is so much to do and explore in Patch Quest, this game is sure to make gamers who enjoy collecting creatures, and exploring huge worlds happy. Though I will warn you that even though it looks like it’s a super cute and easy game, you will be surprised at how challenging it really is! It is incredibly easy to get overwhelmed in areas with ten or more enemies firing at you from every direction! But luckily, riding the huge variety of mounts to learn all their special attacks made up for the constant barrage of bullets I was constantly walking into. This could feel a bit repetitive after a while, but having numerous environments and monsters helped.