Dad Quest Preview

When I first looked up Dad Quest, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. The basics of ‘you are a dad, your child is your weapon, go be a dad’ were a little vague. Admittedly, I didn’t learn a great deal in my half hour playing with the game, but it does go deeper than that.

You take control of a guy at a facility high in the mountains, which is going to give you a child to be a dad to. Once you pass the tests (movement tutorial), you get to choose a child and have to make your way through the facility to begin your quest -- whatever specifics that may entail. The game has a very strong point-and-click adventure vibe, with you needing X item to give to/use on Y.

This has been distilled down from the original idea of a metroidvania roguelike, and I think the tighter focus has benefitted it greatly. After all, it’s all too easy to pack features into a game and result in none of them being very good.

When you awaken after leaving the facility with your child, you are told that you need to beat the best dads to collect dadges which will prove your worth. No, I don’t mean badges. Using your child as a weapon you have to slay beasts, and presumably eventually the other dads.

Of course, with the game not being released until February 2017, the build I played was nowhere near finished. The inventory system needs quite a bit of work, and sleeping needs to be guaranteed not to kill you… Yes, my session ended when I went to sleep, despite the bed warning “Did you know that 5% of people die in their sleep?” -- I took my chances, hoping it would heal me. It did not. So I never got to the fight with Desert Dad…

The fighting mechanic takes a little bit to get used to. You can either throw the child or use it as a club against enemies, using the left and right mouse buttons, aimed with the cursor. As your child levels up, you can unlock various charge powers, where holding the mouse button will do a special attack. If you choose the ‘child extends to club enemies further away’ then holding right mouse will charge that. If you choose the ‘child wields a knife’ or ‘child can fly for a short while and punch monsters’, then it’s left mouse. There are a load of powers that I didn’t even get a chance to see, so I have high hopes.

I brought up with the publisher, Excalibur Games, whether they were worried about parenting groups objecting to the use of a child as a weapon. They explained that, due to the fact the child is invulnerable to harm, and perfectly happy (he grins all the time!) that they weren’t too worried.

Honestly, I’ve always liked both platformers and adventure games. The weapon mechanic is a really nice twist compared to jumping on heads or using guns (although maybe the child uses a gun at a higher level!), so I’m hoping to have another look later along in development. Hopefully I’ll last longer next time...