COMPLETE: Car Quest
Feb. 23rd, 2020 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoI had like a dollar or two worth of Gold Points (Nintendo Switch eShop store credit basically) at the same time a lot of their Steam-tier indies were on deep sale, so I was picking up random bargain bin fodder here and there for like ten cents' worth of Monopoly money each. This one was the closest thing I had to a major purchase here--at 49 cents' worth of said Monopoly money at the time, I could have had like two or three other random Flash games for that price but this one looked __nice__. After some waffling, I decided to "splurge" on it, and I'm really glad I did.
Car Quest is a Switch eShop indie thing wherein you are a car, on a quest. See, the digital(?) world of Blocktaria is in disarray, and it is up to you and an amnesiac Andross head-looking guide to get things back in order.
The gameplay loop starts simple enough: you begin in a closed area with your standard currency collectibles and one particularly important collectible, an artifact. Collecting the artifact cleans up some debris that was blocking your way, allowing you to proceed further, and also restores a little of your guide's memory. In the next area you just opened is... another artifact, which the way forward to the next, and so on. If you watch the first few minutes of this gameplay footage, you pretty much get the idea.
This is the sort of thing that would be strong Little Cup contention, comparable to Marvin's Mittens or Hiiro (peaceful explorathon, chill out and collect things for an hour or two, well that was neat) but this game ran eleven and a half hours in our run. It turns out Blocktaria is surprisingly big, and there's a lot more game than expected here! Still, I would not say say it dragged or overstayed its welcome in any way; merely that I was expecting a great bite-sized game and instead we got a great full-sized game.
The plot does kind of stop after about the first hour or so--it builds up to having a backstory about why Blocktaria is in the state its in, who you and your guide are, etc.--but then the artifacts kind of stop having plot attached and you're just cleaning up the kingdom for a while. Eventually you restore full power and best an antagonist of sorts and there's the main arc, but the game isn't quite over until you find all ten missing museum pieces (only two of which are possible to collect before Blocktaria is fully restored) and then you get your choice of two endings. Choose wisely, because your save file is completely inaccessible once you've made your choice. It's not erased, because it keeps track of your run time and even gives you a cooler-looking golden car as a bonus should you want to play again with it, but everything restarts from the beginning.
My only complaint is that some of the artifacts and especially one or two of the museum pieces are hidden well enough to require a walkthrough, and (currently) this game is so obscure that there are no walkthroughs. There's the nine-part series whose first part I just linked you to above, but it can be a little frustrating trying to find the exact part of the video where this player does the exact one thing you're stuck on, rather than spending ages watching them drive around aimlessly or gather the artifacts you've already found. Oh, and here's one for the museum pieces, which you'll definitely need.
Still, this was fantastic. I don't know if I have it in me to go through all of this again at least right now, though the gold car is pretty cool-looking, it's a fun pretty zone-out kind of game, and who knows? Maybe I'll get nostalgic for it someday. We're content with our one run for now, but let me just say that that one run was a blast. This bargain bin indie title honestly holds up against much larger names. This was a great game that we greatly enjoyed from start to finish. If this looks like your thing at all, it's highly recommended. Even at full price it packs enough entertainment to be worth what it's asking, and on sale it's an absolute steal.
(Also, some reassurance because I have some friends who are incredibly paranoid about this after having been burned by it way too many times: No, this is not a stealth Indie Game About Death. The reveal of who you are or who your guide is has nothing to do with anyone being in a hospitalized coma, or anything like that. Blocktaria is just a cool trippy-looking fantasy vaporwave world to drive around in without being a somber metaphor for anything. You're safe.)
Car Quest is a Switch eShop indie thing wherein you are a car, on a quest. See, the digital(?) world of Blocktaria is in disarray, and it is up to you and an amnesiac Andross head-looking guide to get things back in order.
The gameplay loop starts simple enough: you begin in a closed area with your standard currency collectibles and one particularly important collectible, an artifact. Collecting the artifact cleans up some debris that was blocking your way, allowing you to proceed further, and also restores a little of your guide's memory. In the next area you just opened is... another artifact, which the way forward to the next, and so on. If you watch the first few minutes of this gameplay footage, you pretty much get the idea.
This is the sort of thing that would be strong Little Cup contention, comparable to Marvin's Mittens or Hiiro (peaceful explorathon, chill out and collect things for an hour or two, well that was neat) but this game ran eleven and a half hours in our run. It turns out Blocktaria is surprisingly big, and there's a lot more game than expected here! Still, I would not say say it dragged or overstayed its welcome in any way; merely that I was expecting a great bite-sized game and instead we got a great full-sized game.
The plot does kind of stop after about the first hour or so--it builds up to having a backstory about why Blocktaria is in the state its in, who you and your guide are, etc.--but then the artifacts kind of stop having plot attached and you're just cleaning up the kingdom for a while. Eventually you restore full power and best an antagonist of sorts and there's the main arc, but the game isn't quite over until you find all ten missing museum pieces (only two of which are possible to collect before Blocktaria is fully restored) and then you get your choice of two endings. Choose wisely, because your save file is completely inaccessible once you've made your choice. It's not erased, because it keeps track of your run time and even gives you a cooler-looking golden car as a bonus should you want to play again with it, but everything restarts from the beginning.
My only complaint is that some of the artifacts and especially one or two of the museum pieces are hidden well enough to require a walkthrough, and (currently) this game is so obscure that there are no walkthroughs. There's the nine-part series whose first part I just linked you to above, but it can be a little frustrating trying to find the exact part of the video where this player does the exact one thing you're stuck on, rather than spending ages watching them drive around aimlessly or gather the artifacts you've already found. Oh, and here's one for the museum pieces, which you'll definitely need.
Still, this was fantastic. I don't know if I have it in me to go through all of this again at least right now, though the gold car is pretty cool-looking, it's a fun pretty zone-out kind of game, and who knows? Maybe I'll get nostalgic for it someday. We're content with our one run for now, but let me just say that that one run was a blast. This bargain bin indie title honestly holds up against much larger names. This was a great game that we greatly enjoyed from start to finish. If this looks like your thing at all, it's highly recommended. Even at full price it packs enough entertainment to be worth what it's asking, and on sale it's an absolute steal.
(Also, some reassurance because I have some friends who are incredibly paranoid about this after having been burned by it way too many times: No, this is not a stealth Indie Game About Death. The reveal of who you are or who your guide is has nothing to do with anyone being in a hospitalized coma, or anything like that. Blocktaria is just a cool trippy-looking fantasy vaporwave world to drive around in without being a somber metaphor for anything. You're safe.)