Quest Arrest Review – A Gameboy Color Adventure on Evercade Marred by Bad Language and Glitches!

One of the great things about video games is that it allows one to experience things that most will not be able to do in real life. For example, I will never be a cop in real life. But in Quest Arrest I can be a detective in this top-down adventure game for the Gameboy and Evercade on Indie Heroes Collection 1!

Premise

You’re a new officer and the city has gone downhill due to crime and it’s your job to clean it up! After getting your radio you leave the police station and go on the beat in your fair city. This involves talking to citizens, fighting with criminals, and solving little mysteries in town. Much of the latter are related to a crime boss, named Athena, who is causing problems in the area.

Puzzles and Gameplay

In fact, one of the things that I really enjoyed about this game was that there are about five mysteries that you need to resolve, which can be tackled in different orders. These are completed through a variety of means, and often involve talking to certain people and obtaining clues or items to progress the story. For example, you may examine a crime scene, talk to witnesses, and arrest criminals. By the way, nearly all the baddies in this game wear black masks so they’re easily identifiable.

Many of these little events have different outcomes depending on whether you are a “good cop” or “bad cop.” You can behave as one or the other based on different dialog choices you pick in the various dialog sequences. Usually these are obvious which one are good or bad, so the gameplay mechanic isn’t that advanced.

Similarly, you get in a lot of fights with the previously mentioned criminals in town. These play out like battles in Pokemon, but with you being able to attack them in different ways, such as using a taser or shooting them with a gun. None of these attacks are graphic, which is appreciated. One aspect that is original is that when you knock the enemy’s life bar down you can arrest them.

If you try to do this, a simple mini-game where you need to press arrow keys or buttons on the screen plays out. If you are successful in doing this, you arrest the suspect and send him or her back to jail. Doing so increases your credibility with the citizens. On the other hand, killing them reduces your credibility. Before playing the game, many people complained that this arrest mechanic quickly became boring. I enjoyed it because I thought the storyline and different mechanics in the game were interesting enough to keep my interest.

Credibility and Dialog

One thing that helped with this interest was that not only were there a significant amount of characters found throughout the town, but they’d also say various thing based on your credibility rating. If you were a good cop, then they may help you with another place to heal your hit points or give you tips on how to beat the game. However, if you’re a bad cop and kill all the criminals, then they will likely cuss you out and say how trashy you are and that you should quit.

This part of the dialog became really old rather quickly. Basically, every masked bad guy cusses you out, and if you are a bad cop, a lot of the citizens do as well! And to add insult to injury, if you die in battle, the narrator/creator of the game insults you, too!! At first I was kind of OK with all this, but by the end of the game, the cussing and all the negative dialog felt lazy and simplistic.

That’s a significant problem with this game. The credibility system is too simple. All the bad guys are totally bad. All the good guys are totally good. There’s no middle ground.

Fights and the Fists Glitch

In like manner, the battle design is too simple. For example, if you shoot your gun, you will do 10 damage points, or 20, if you score a critical hit. Likewise, when you taze someone, it is either 5 or 10 damage points. Plus, I don’t remember you ever missing in battle.

Enemies can’t miss either. But for some ridiculous reason, when criminals hit you with their fists, you don’t lose hit points (at least sometimes). They’re supposed to do 5 damage points when they use that attack, but it is never consistent. I wasn’t able to figure out what triggered such a glitch, but in more difficult fights I would hope for it to happen. I was actually able to progress further in the story at some points because my enemies kept hitting me with their fists, I would “lose” 5 hit points, but my life bar wouldn’t go down. As such, I would win the fight and continue on.

Oh, and by the way, there are no health restoring items. So there isn’t any way to heal your hit points in the middle of battle. This is another example of simplicity.

Credibility and Busted Endings

Unfortunately, again, I have to talk about another significant problem. While the credibility system works to a point, it is flawed where it matters most. During most of the game there is a good deal of dialog variety based on your credibility. I enjoyed this aspect.

Yet, at the end, there is a point where you irrevocably become a “good cop.” This is unavoidable, and makes much of the “bad cop” route a waste. The only way to get the bad cop ending is to make one choice at the end of the game. Of course, doing so gets you insulted by the creator again…

The good cop ending is pretty funny and I enjoyed it, as simple as it was.

Graphics and Sound

Speaking of what I enjoyed, I liked the graphics. I also appreciated that playing this on the Evercade is the only to play the game in color on physical media.

The original version of the game was a black and white Gameboy game. Although you can also play the game in color on Steam, it never goes on sale.

Anyway, the sprite work was fine, with little square characters all over the place. The battle animations are not the best, but they work. I felt like the color added a good deal to the title, even though sometimes they seemed a bit splotchy, as in the changes in color between parts of the screen were quite stark. Like the contrast between colors was too great. The thing I disliked the most was that there is a lot of reused assets for the enemies. The bad guys with the masks look the same.

As I played the game, I came to feel that Quest Arrest’s music was jarring. I appreciated that the music tracks changed a lot as they played out, but they also seemed quite shrill at times. The sound effects were fine and I thought they were average.

Summary

Coming to the end of this review, it’s actually a difficult one for me to rate. During the majority of the game, I thought it was a positive experience and I was sure I would rate it as such.

Yet, after reflecting on the game further, I can’t help but view it as mixed. I thought the graphics and sound were fine, and I especially liked the little mysteries and different gameplay mechanics.

The big problem is that the game is a total jerk to the player and the credibility system falls apart where it matters the most: at the ending. Because of these reasons, I am rating it as mixed. I had some fun with it, but I don’t think it is worth the $4.99 price on Steam either because of the tone of the game, and that’s a shame.

At least the original Gameboy version is playable in a web browser for free at one of the links below!

On a different note, the last two games I reviewed from Indie Heroes Collection 1 are the top-down horror game Deadeus, along with the side scrolling action platformer, PLOID. Feel free to check those out if you’d like! The next couple of games I’ll review from this cartridge include Foxyland and Super Homebrew War.

Title: Quest Arrest (Itch.io Page)
Genre: Top-down Adventure
Year Released: 2020
Developer: John Roo
Available On: The original version is on Gameboy and Itch.io, while the GBC version is on Evercade through Indie Heroes Collection 1 and Steam.
Price Paid: $1.14, or $16.00 for Indie Heroes Collection 1

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid.