[h1]FoxMania: The Quest To Review All Fox Games On Steam![/h1]
[i]Conditions for inclusion:
[list]
[*] -The player character must be consistently a fox; the fox must not be merely a skin or a character option
[*] -Must have 100% working Steam achievements
[*] -Must not be a visual novel
[/list][/i]
[b]Game #24: Kit’s Quest[/b]
Oh boy, this is a big one.
[i]Kit’s Quest[/i] (not to be confused with [i]Kitt’s Quest[/i], a game it seems I’ll be getting to later) is a 3D platformer collect-a-thon where you play as a four-legged fox trying to rescue his sister from the castle of an evil dragon. Along the way, there are huge worlds to explore at your own pace, lots of environmental puzzles to solve, and tons of collectibles. It’s pretty obvious how badly this game wants to be [i]Banjo-Kazooie[/i], with “dragon teeth” being the main jiggy-style collectible that gates progression behind a wide variety of creative puzzles and challenges, and berries being the minor musical note-style collectible that fills each level in the dozens and rewards you for simply exploring.
I’ll be blunt: this game made an [i]awful[/i] first impression on me with its flat, barebones hub worlds, janky jumping physics which didn’t seem to match well with the character animations, and baffling character design. (Why are realistic four-legged foxes wearing hats? Why are their dens filled with human furniture? How do they use half of it? Why do they have soulless blank stares with no mouth movements and barely any animations? Why does Kit grunt and pant like a human every time he jumps? [i]Why is the game like this?[/i])
Playing as this four-legged fox just felt wrong somehow, and there was something really off-putting about the basic jumping and platforming action, never feeling pleasant or natural. The camera felt particularly awful in places, as the level design didn’t often feel built around its specific behaviors. Even the running and exploring didn’t feel good, as there is no run button to hold; you need to repeatedly hammer the dash button to keep a steady pace. The flourishing, adventurous orchestral score that hits you in the face when you enter the hub world seems more than a bit tone-deaf as it accompanies your run through bare, rudimentary polygonal boxes that are supposed to be rooms. There was just something… [i]very off[/i] about this game’s design. If things didn’t get better, I was ready to give this game a 4 / 10 at [i]best[/i].
But now, after playing through most of what the game has to offer, here’s my theory as to what’s happened: I think the developer meant to hire a graphic designer to overhaul the game’s character models and animations to give it more of a whimsical cartoony personality, perhaps something like the character design of [i]Super Lucky’s Tale[/i]. But it feels like the game’s budget ran out, so the decision was made to simply run with a bunch of stock models from the asset store, mostly foxes for the good guys, and lots and lots of spiders for the enemies. And I think that’s the game’s biggest downfall: the stock assets really, really, [i]really[/i] are not befitting of the game, and it badly needs that artistic redesign it never received. The characters in this game really need big expressive eyes, smiling faces, and personalized, exaggerated animations… but instead they’re just realistic animals with minimal built-in animations, black beady eyes, and color saturation turned up way too high, giving it the undeserved stench of a shovelware/asset flip game. In particular, if Kit had mannerisms and abilities that actually fit with his jump arc and gameplay abilities, I think even the platforming would feel so much better!
Unfortunately as cliché as it is when reviewing a 3D platformer, I have to mention of the camera. It’s… not great. There are far too many situations that aren’t built around the camera’s movements, and not nearly enough special behaviors coded for the camera in such situations. There are situations where you can run behind the camera and lose track of the character, situations where you’ll run through tiny archways and tunnels while the camera is left to snag against the wall, situations where you’re expected to jump out into the middle of nowhere with no cues to judge the distance of your jump, and boss arenas where you’ll be manually controlling the camera more than you’re controlling Kit himself. Now, there are a lot of camera controls you can tweak in the options menu (make sure you turn up camera sensitivity or you’ll never be able to beat half the bosses) but it felt like the designer was pinning responsibility onto the player, instead of redesigning the levels to work with the camera. (It reminded me of [i]Yooka-Laylee[/i] when players complained about the camera problems. Instead of fixing them, the developers added an unhelpful “free” camera mode, which felt like they were saying “screw it, fix the damn camera yourself.”)
With all that being said, I’m happy to report that if you decide to commit to the game, get used to the awkward controls, learn to skillfully control Kit’s floaty jumps, endure the often-godawful camera, and accept the off-putting character design, the game gets [i]way[/i] better. It honestly feels like I was watching a timelapse of the developer’s budding skill with each passing level. Many of the environmental puzzles were super clever and elegant, hidden stuff was satisfying to find with just the right amount of hints, and the level design kept surprising me. The game really hits its stride in the late-game area called “Enchanted Metalworks” which beautifully nails the mood, difficulty, puzzle design, and intrigue of gameplay elements in all the right ways, while also introducing some awesome platforming elements I’ve rarely seen in other games. That was the moment I realized I’d be giving the game a thumbs-up.
The soundtrack is [i]phenomenal[/i] for this type of game. It’s varied, it’s catchy, and there are fitting little leitmotifs for every area. It sometimes feels like the soundtrack is too good for the game it’s accompanying, but I won’t complain. Huge thumbs-up to the soundtrack here.
As a last little nitpick: I’d say that the game somewhat overstays its welcome when it comes to completionism. You can collect all the powers, dragon teeth, and berries… but then you still have to find about three different kinds of super-secret collectibles in each area, plus there are several achievements for finding ways to [i]jump out of the map[/i]. In a collect-a-thon like this, I would argue that it’s very important to cater to the player’s completionism OCD and set 100% completion as a reasonably attainable goal for the average player. Going overboard with the bonus objectives is a great way to send players running to a walkthrough and cutting short their own personal journey of discovery. On a somewhat unforgivable note, there are also several missable achievements for performing some wacky and unintuitive stunts early in the game, requiring a dedicated completionist to start a completely new file once they look up the achievement list. I would argue that forcing a completionist to start a whole new file, especially in a collect-a-thon game like this, goes against the whole spirit of completionism.
It's a bumpy ride, but it’s a journey worth taking if you can push past the janky platforming and the awkward character design. There’s good music, nicely hidden collectibles, and some seriously great puzzle moments and scenarios, and it left me feeling proud of the developer, how far they’ve come over the course of the game, and how much heart obviously went into this work. It took me about 10 hours to find the non-super-secret completion tasks without a guide, and I mostly enjoyed the experience.
If you like foxes, Banjo-like games, and consider yourself a patient and open-minded gamer, seriously give this a try and stick with it for a while. As a whole, it’s really not bad at all!
6 / 10.
