Quench Review

Elephants are awesome. I’m sure you all agree with me, because you’re intelligent and have excellent taste, which is why you’re here. Elephants are somehow both adorable and majestic and honestly are a great way to lure me in. This week, Quench did just that, grabbed my attention with promises of cool elephants having an epic journey of magic. After playing, I can confirm there are, technically, elephants on a journey that involves magic, unfortunately it’s not that great.

In Quench, players become an avatar of nature known simply as “Shepherd.” Born from the last fruit of a magic tree, Shepherd is a luminescent spirit bird with the power to control the natural forces of the world. Players must use these powers to aid the animal tribes of Africa with a migration ritual by guiding the tribes through dangerous terrain, healing the land and combating a mysterious evil that stands against the tribes.

The gameplay of Quench is a mixture of puzzle game and god game, with players looking down on the levels from above. Most of the levels involve getting one or more herds of animals from one side of the map to the other along a branching path. Along these paths will be a variety of obstacles that can only be dealt with by Shepherd’s divine powers. As Shepherd, the player has access to four different powers: rainstorms, gusts of wind, incredibly localized earthquakes, and lightnings strikes. But since Quench is a puzzle game, players aren’t allowed to cast their awesome power around however they want. Each power can only be used a limited number of times, with players receiving an initial amount at the start of the level and earning more by using specific powers at specific points to earn more uses of other powers. The limited use of powers makes Quench feel more like a puzzle game, but also clashes with the living world the puzzles take place in and is the start of my issues with this game. Because, as I will explain later, not every obstacle is always fixed permanently by using powers, Quench becomes a puzzle game that not only tests your problem-solving skills but also your timing and strategic thinking. And since the different powers rarely provide similar solutions to the same problems, when the player runs out of the necessary powers, the only option players have left is to restart the level. At times, playing Quench felt like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with a mischievous goblin standing beside the table who will wait until I’ve matched the wrong pieces together three times, then grabs a fistful of puzzle pieces and throwing them out into the hallway and disassembling my progress when I go to retrieve them. I would have liked this game a lot more if the developers had decided to lean more towards god game or puzzle game instead of splitting the difference.

But what are the obstacles that stand against the player? Well, they come in two varieties: difficult terrain and enemy animals. Difficult terrain is anything from sand dunes to deep rivers to barren soil. These areas will slowly whittle away at the stamina of the herds as long as the herd is within the area. Dealing with terrain is easy and can usually be solved directly, such as blowing away dunes by controlling the wind, but are sometimes a little more abstract, like using earthquakes to push rocks into a river to dam it up. However you remedy the situation, terrain problems, once fixed, are almost never a problem again. The other kind of obstacle isn’t so abiding, those being the enemy animals. Because a strange evil has begun taking over the land, evil animals wait to prey on the tribes. These animals will also deplete herd stamina, but much more quickly and severely if the herd enters their proximity. They are also much harder to deal with than difficult terrain because three of the four powers available to players only temporarily redirect or stun enemies, and using lightning on them will kill some enemies after a little while but also lights them on fire, making them exponentially more dangerous until they do keel over. Both kinds of obstacles must be dealt with because if a herd’s stamina gets too low, one or more animals in the herd will collapse and eventually die. The penalty for animal deaths is a depressing death cry and nothing else. It’s perplexing why the developers added the potential for animals to die and not have it effect the game in any way until the last animal of a tribe dies. It leads players to either obsessively restart levels to avoid the death for emotional reasons or view herd numbers as an expendable resource to get past obstacles without using powers.

So, the gameplay isn’t so hot, but a great story can smooth those issues out, right? True, but unfortunately the story of Quench isn’t stellar either. Obviously, the story revolves around the migration to the east and the animals met along the way. A small thing I appreciated was the simplicity of some of the animal names. It made a lot of sense that animals would have names that reflected their attitudes or place in their tribes, so names like Shaman and Headlong were fitting. Most of the dialogue is flat and informational, without a lot of feeling in it. The different animals did have a bit of character but it was pretty one-note and honestly not that interesting. Near the end, the plot starts getting into intriguing themes of divinity and death, but players have to get through about 20 levels of ho-hum storytelling for a few with cool ideas, which isn’t a great ratio. Also, at about 8 hours of game time I’m pretty sure I’m almost done and around two hours of that are when I got stuck on puzzles or left the game running as I did something else when I got frustrated. I know a game’s worth isn’t defined by how long it takes to beat it, but it’s an aspect that’s worth consideration.

I don’t like saying a game is bad, especially games made by small teams, but I also don’t want to earn a reputation as a liar. I think there are good ideas in Quench and I hope the developers can learn from this game to take those aspects and make a great new game next time. I can’t see this game being worth your money, but since they’re giving $1 to charity for every game they sell, I say why not give $1 or even $5 to Charity: Water or Midwest-native organization Aqua Africa.

Don’t buy this game

I hate to say it, but there’s nothing here worth spending your money on