Introvert Quest takes place in a modern-day city called Sky City. You play as a young man that is an introvert named Bryce, who is going to therapy for treatment to help him overcome his fear of people to adjust to the real world.
Introvert Quest is an RPG Maker game developed by indie game makers, Amaterasu Software. Before getting into the review, I want to start by saying I was provided with a free Steam Key to review this game. I also want to point out that I don’t normally play RPG Maker titles, so I’m not familiar with how many of the stock assets were used when making Introvert Quest, versus how much was original content.
Regardless, I would say that this game is borderline on being more of a Visual Novel than a JRPG. The story is like a slice of life adventure as you follow the life of a young man trying to overcome his fear of the world.
For the first hour of the game it is pretty much just dialogue and getting to know the characters, there is hardly really any combat for a large chunk of it, and majority of the parts where the character walks around is automated, so the game relies purely on the story and character development to carry you through the first hour or so. You do get to play for a little while, but it is mostly walking from point A to point B, then there is more dialogue.
This wouldn’t be a problem, but the grammar and spelling for most of the dialogue is pretty poor, so there are quite a few mistakes that distracts you from the story. The developers say they will hire a professional translator soon to help correct the mistakes, but relying purely on the story for the first hour or so while also having bad grammar and spelling isn’t a very good mix for a game that is composed mostly of dialogue.
As for the visual aesthetics of the game, I actually like the art style, and the quirky music fits the story and the crazy scenarios you face. I also like the way the city is designed and the public transit system they used to quickly travel from one part of the city to the next. As mentioned before, I’m not familiar with RPG Maker, so I’m not sure how much of the content was asset flipped, but it is decent enough to immerse you into the story.
The main character Bryce was annoying at first, but he quickly grew on me. I really like how much character development the character has and how much he changes (if you choose for him to change). I was also surprised that the dialogue changed with certain events based on your actions, the events from early on in the game also carried over into later events, which made me curious to play the game again to see just how much the game changed based on your actions. Certain characters would reflect on the past and I thought it was clever that the developer spent that much time on the branching dialogue system to incorporate your choices into the story.
As for the actual game, it revolves around Bryce’s therapist sending you on mundane quests around the city to help you adjust and socialize more with the rest of society, but the city is also filled with a lot of really strange people and freaks, and it often times results with our main protagonist getting into some type of trouble and ending up in the hospital by the end of the day, which is also quite funny at times.
Other parts of the story reminds me of the Earthbound/Mother series because there are a lot of psychotic people in the city that do really stupid things, such as, creating a nuclear space program to send badgers into Outer space to travel the stars, another guy entered his pet duck into an underground bloodsport cockfighting tournament, and you’ll also find crazy doomsday believers that live in the sewers because they believe that World War 3 is about to happen and the world is about to end.
Introvert Quest is filled with nonsensical humor, and there were quite a few funny moments throughout the game that made me smile or chuckle a few times. The crazy part about it all is how consistent the crazy story is and how the little events all link together to tell a bigger story. A few scenes in the game also pokes fun at reality and just how stupid or crazy our modern day system is set up and how ridiculous it is to complete simple tasks.
From the eyes of an Introvert, we realize just how broken our real life system is, which made me smile a bit as he questioned what was going on or why such an easy task was so challenging.
Introvert Quest does have a few fight scenes, such as the Digital Duels, which is an optional series of quests where you can talk to and find other duelists around town, buy upgrades for your digital pet, and battle for fame and fortune in the Digital Duels tournament (pretty much a Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh Parody). There are also other battles where Bryce himself will have to physically engage in combat and you can equip him with weapons and items to make him stronger (such as using Chainsaws or BB guns in combat).
The battles take place in turn-based combat fight scenes, similar to the old Final Fantasy games. However, special skills use a directional pad input system to perform critical hits. If you can input all the directions before the timer runs out then your character will deal more damage which can really help turn the tide of battle. Even if you fail the input, the character will still attack, but you will deal far less damage or have a higher chance of missing your attacks.
Combat is far and few, but I did find the system to be interesting. I personally think that a few of the monsters were a bit too strong and the balance for the combat felt off which made a few battles almost impossible to win, and others way too easy.
Another major flaw I found with Introvert Quest was that there was some really strange lag and FPS drops at random moments for no reason. It is an RPG Maker game, so it should have run without any problems, but that wasn’t the case.
Furthermore, I also encountered quite a few glitches. One glitch had my character split in half so there were two Bryce’s that were running around and fighting in combat, the second Bryce even showed up in the options menu and has his own stats. Another glitch had my digital pet lose all of his special skills and the option to use items, the only thing I could do was attack and he seemed to have reverted back to level one for no reason. The last glitch made me get stuck because the game had a glitch where it would crash after you received your new clothes and there was no way to progress past that point. The developers quickly fixed most of the glitches after I pointed them out, but I think the game could have used a bit more polish before being released to the public.
Overall, the story is fun and the characters are interesting, but I couldn’t see myself paying $4.99 for this game because I found myself getting frustrated with the glitches and disappointed with the overall execution of the game. If you can grab it really cheap during a Steam Sale, go for it, but otherwise, I don’t think it is worth its current price tag.
For more information, you can visit the Steam Store Page to Learn more about the game.
