Kit's Quest

Sadly, I was unable to finish this game for multiple reasons. I tried to play this with mouse and keyboard. The mouse is not used at all and should have been activated instead of the multiple keys required to move the camera. I got motion sickness having to swing the camera to and fro to see what was around. There was a first person view too, but it was very limited. The movement was very janky and it was really hard to line up jumps especially onto a moving platform. Now I am no slouch with platform games, but this was very difficult because it was hard to gauge the space and direction of jump. You had to be very precise. I died so many times, it wasn't funny. This appears to be a fetch quest: collecting berries (which appears to be the 'currency'), golden mushrooms and dragon's teeth. Graphics are crisp but basic. The animals are cute. People with poor mobility should steer clear of this game unless they have a controller. On keyboard, you are using multiple keys at the same time. It looks like a game for older kids, as it does look cute. But there is a big spider alert!! The baddie in this game has spiders for its minions, so anyone with arachnophobia should avoid this game. I can see that a lot of love has gone into this game and I wish the developer well. It did recommend a controller, but I didn't expect things to be so bad on keyboard. Fox lovers will adore this game. Unfortunately I can't refund this game because it is over 2 weeks old. Rats!

[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.

Disclaimer: I've played a few builds prior to Early Access, and I know the developer IRL. However, I paid for the game with my own money and did not receive any kind of compensation for this review (alas). Still, I figured I'd give an honest review based on my experiences with the live build. Context: Played in Speedrun Mode (which I think is identical to Extreme, but with a visible timer). I got to 99% (main collectables) + 50% (secret eggs) in about 12-15 hours of actual playtime. Played entirely on the Steam Deck (handheld mode, on minimum graphics settings). I'd consider myself comfortably "mid" at platformers--good enough to 100% a Mario game, but I'm not going to be doing any speedruns anytime soon. Pros: + It's bright and colorful, and really feels like a solid throwback to classic character platformers and collectathons like Spyro and Banjo-Kazooie. It's obviously not as polished as those games, but it does feel like a nice homage to the genre all the same. At least until guides come out, exploring the game blind is a very nostalgiac experience! + The soundtrack is really catchy, with a number of tunes clearly inspired by classic SNES/N64 games (Ocarina of Time, Donkey Kong Country 2, etc). It's always fun to get to a new zone just to hear the music change. + There are a lot of fun exploration puzzles here that are pretty satisfying to complete. In particular, the hidden eggs are often interesting pathing puzzles that require you to think about how all of the levels connect to each other. Overall, even without any guides out yet, I feel like the exploration is in a nice sweet spot. Things are just hard enough to find that you have to go out of your way to search for stuff, but there's just enough hints in the game world that it doesn't feel impossible. + There's lots of content here, even in early access. There's still a few areas that are blocked off, and no final boss yet, but I don't think it'll take much more for this to feel complete. Cons: - It's certainly passable, and some of the zones are actually quite pretty in spite of the generic assets, but there's a level of slight jank in the visuals that can be a little hard to overlook. - Despite being a character platformer, there's not much in the way of "characters" here. Kit is just a silent protagonist whose defining feature is "he's a fox." The other oddly realistic animal models sometimes say funny things in between gameplay hints, which can certainly be charming, but the world and characters just aren't anything to write home about. - Many challenges demand patience and practice. This one probably isn't a con for everyone, but I personally found myself getting pretty frustrated at the number of times I had to redo sections due to what felt like 1-frame mistakes or weird physics interactions. This is definitely exacerbated on the harder difficulties, so... - IMO, Speedrun/Extreme mode isn't worth playing on. I powered all the way through it, but I found that the shortened timers and buffed bosses have a tendency to feel more like unfair "gotchas" rather than tests of skill. Plus, I found that completing challenges on Speedrun/Extreme really requires you to play at the edges of the mechanics, where you know exactly what to do but spend the majority of the time fighting the camera and controls to make it work. - Some of the challenges could use better checkpoints. There's a frequent pattern of putting long platforming sections right in front of a lethal puzzle that just feel kind of mean. The Great Oak level seemed to be full of these in particular. Overall, I enjoyed it despite the frustrations of Speedrun mode. I think it's an easy recommendation for anyone who likes this style of platformer, and an even easier recommendation for people who don't mind taking their time and savoring the experience. Less recommended for people who are impatient, or those looking primarily for strong visual design or story.

Kit's Quest is a very nice 3D (puzzle) platformer with beautiful graphics, nice music and lots of content. If you love 3D (puzzle) platformers, you'll love this game.

Buen juego, lo recomiendo. Zorrito lindo, todo chiquito, todo bonito.

This game defenitely has a low bugget look and feel for it...but it is much better than it looks like... The graphics are simple yeah, it looks a little like those stock graphics from unity that you can purchase, but they still look nice, and as someone who loves playing rpg maker games, "stock" graphics never really bottered me... the soundtrack is really nice, and it does that cool "banjo-kazooie" thing where it changes style depending on where you are, like when you are underwater or on a specific location, the song is the same but the style changes to fit what you're doing... In this game you collect berries (which are like music notes in BK) and dragon teeth (jiggies)...and this is where this game shines, the dragon teeth are so fun and you have to do a lot of creative stuff to get to them...you are rarelly ever given something for free, mostly just in the first level... but from level 2 forwars everything feels earned, but nothing is too challenging that if feels unfair...the final level(that is in the game of yet) is very difficult and my favorite in the game... There is also a secret collectanble that I think there is one in every level, and you have to do some crazy stuff to get to them...you feel like you are breaking the game or exploiting it's mechanics...but no...you are supposed to do this stuff to get to these secrets, and they feel super rewarding when you finally find a way to get to them... The powerups are really cool too...you have simple ones like a ground pound and a double jump...but you got some really cool ones in form of mushrooms (that works similarly to mario 64 caps)...the water skipping mushroom is one of the most fun power ups I've seen in a platformer of this kind... In short, this game is tons of fun...it's clearly made by someone who likes this genre...it feels like a loveletter to old-school collectatons from the N64 era...it definitely deserves more attention...

This is an excellent collectathon platformer that feels right at home alongside the N64-era games from which it draws inspiration. Pros: - Satisfying platforming with a good balance of difficulty, and some seriously hard (optional) puzzles and challenges. - A large nonlinear world with many areas to explore and lots of content. - Charming writing/dialogue for the sparse scattering of NPCs. - An expertly arranged soundtrack with old-school MIDI charm. Cons: - Occasionally fumbly controls/movement/camera that can add frustration to some of the harder platforming areas. - Visuals/art style feel solid but somewhat flat. Verdict: Check this out if you're a fan of collectathons, or want some difficult platforming puzzles/challenges!

I'll just go to the point: if you love N64 and/or PS1 platformers, do not hesitate! Kit's Quest plays halfway between good ol' Banjo-Kazooie and Spyro, taking the best of the two. You can tell it was made with passion for the genre, and even if it doesn't look like much at first glance, the gameplay and level design absolutely make up for it. My two favourite aspects, apart from the ones I cited, are the dialogue and the soundtrack. The story itself isn't particularly complex (well, I mean, it's an old-school platformer, what did you expect?), but the way the characters interact with each other is what sold me. The humour is on-point and well-paced, and the writing itself seems to fit perfectly. As for the soundtrack, it's absolutely brilliant. Not just because of the composition, but most importantly because it's adaptive. Both ways: the music adapts to the level and the level adapts to the music! Now, the game isn't perfect of course. The graphics aren't particularly impressive, which isn't necessarily an issue, but it does require being able to look past it. The game is also quite challenging, and the hardest difficulty settings are borderline unfair. For this reason, I recommend playing either in “Apprentice" mode, or “Challenger” mode, at least at first. Personally, I think the qualities of Kit's Quest redeem its flaws by a landslide, and I'd even go as far as saying that the graphics, albeit simple, have a certain charm to them. I've played “famous” indie platformers that looked amazing on the surface, and yet wished they were half of what Kit's Quest is. This game truly deserves to BLOW UP! So all in all, don't let the graphics fool you. If you like retro platformers, definitely play it and talk about it!

Thanks for making this game! It's got a lot of creative elements. Also, it's very beautiful and the music is great. A wholesome and relaxing experience!

I have just completed everything in the early access version of the game, and had a wonderful time! Things I enjoyed about the game: ---The game very much does not hold back with its difficulty. It maintains the air of being a cute game where you jump around as a fox, but there are moments where I needed to take the challenges the game was presenting seriously. With few exceptions, it doesn't feel unfair in the slightest. You could say that different areas of the different levels build in difficulty as you go, but the levels are very non-linear, so you just explore and encounter these difficult segments naturally. It's a rollarcoaster ride of challenge, not a ramp. ---What sold me on the game when I played the demo (which you should play if you're on the fence, it's free!) is that initial boss fight with the big spider. It showed that the dev had a lot of ideas of how to use your character in interesting ways. And that continued throughout the whole game. Up to the very last part of the game, it kept surprising me how many interesting concepts there were, and how many unique feeling situations/fights/challenges you could be put into. ---Every part of the map is stuffed with stuffed with things to interact with. You of course don't need to, but it helped spur on a curiosity in me that made me get drawn back to it repeatedly. ---There are a lot of genuinely very charming characters to talk to. They're not too multifaceted or anything, but how they're peppered into the game adds to a somewhat cheesy air that I love. ---If you're trying to 100% the game, it isn't a total hell! The game gives you *just enough* tools to figure out where to go and what to do. Every single solution felt rewarding to come up with. Even when the game was off, I was still spending a decent chunk of time reviewing my memory of the map and coming up with theories of how I could get whatever I needed to collect. The hint system works great, where once you get a certain amount of the collectable in question, you can get pointers on the last few. That system isn't fully in place for the early access, so the dev had to nudge me in vaguely the right direction a few times, but it worked out fine. If you're clever, you absolutely wouldn't need a guide to get everything. ---The game has a difficulty system that's more than just "some more lives here, some more time on these times challenges there". I don't know all the specific changes, but they're a lot more subtle, and a lot more all-encompassing. I haven't played with it too much, but I switched the game to easy halfway through (see: me talking about difficulty earlier... I'm not the best at platformers, I mainly play puzzle games), and it helped a lot. ---There are only a few games where I won't immediately turn off the game noise to play my own music instead, and this is one of them. The music feels quirky, fun, encouraging, and very matching all the different areas. I'm a massive audiophile and music fan. There were times late in the game where I turned off the game music to play my own, thinking that I had heard it enough by this point. But that never lasted for very long, I kept turning the game music back on. It's seriously great to listen to- maybe even just by itself. ---The dev has been very active in the discord server linked on the steam page and always responding the same day, whether it be related to bug reports, offering tips on certain sections, giving out hints if one asks, and generally encouraging players. It's been quite motivating! Issues I had with the game: ---The big issue I have, and I've seen a couple other people mention, is that the camera controls are very difficult to get a hang of. I was very disoriented when first playing the game, and it takes quite a lot of fiddling with the settings to get it where you want. I found it to be a major part of planning my movements in some sections to plan how to position my camera. I don't know exactly why it throws me off so much, but it just feels so incredibly off. ---The game does have a rather lot of bugs and unintended solutions right now, but it is in early access, and I only encountered a single bug that actually made it harder to progress. I doubt this will be too big of a deal as development continues. I honestly don't have any other issues with the game. It's a lovely game for if you like platformers, puzzles, games with metroidvania elements, collecting all the numbers, etc. Very cute, chill, and engaging. I can't wait for the full release.