2 replies to this topic

[Russ]

The Deep by Joaish
 
  
 

This was made for the Zquest Classic (ZC) 2.55 Contest, held to celebrate the final release of the newest stable build of ZC. This game was originally made for the non-scripted bracket, meaning everything you see here is made fully in-engine on ZC 2.55, with exactly 0 bytes in the ZScript buffer. You will get to see a plethora of unique gimmicks that would have been previously impossible on older versions of ZC without the use of scripts. This quest was originally made in the last 3 1/2 weeks of the 3 month contest period, though taking into account the extra updates post contest, development time clocks in a little over a month.

A really cool short-mid sized Metroidvania quest. It reminds me of Umbral Cloud in the best ways. It was made in 2.55 without any scripts and really shows off a lot of what the engine can do now. While I wish it had abandoned that scriptless mentality for its final boss fight, it's really impressive and fun overall. I think everyone could do with playing it and realizing what 2.55 is capable of.

 
I think my little blurb above speaks for itself. I love this quest, I'm impressed by what it can do, and I think everyone involved in quest development should check it out to see what this engine is capable of now.

You can join discussion of the quest in the Discord thread, which can be found here. We encourage casual discussion in the Discord thread and longer thoughts on the quest in the forum thread here.

[Shane]

I played the contest version, and I can confidently say the quest is really, really good. Was an absolute joy to play and probably one of my all-time favourites. Can't wait to give this another shot and see what the post-contest version added.

[Haylee]

 

More deaths than my Umbral Cloud playthrough, which is funny.

 

Note for anybody looking to play the quest, your player character is named after what you named your save file, so for anybody who names their saves after what quest they're playing, enjoy playing as hit ZC OC "TheDeep" (This is not a critique, I just wanted to point it out.).

 

Legitimately fantastic. Literally my only "criticism" (if you can even call it that) is I think the X and Y buttons in the subscreen should be swapped and that's actually just it. Some rooms in the lategame (mostly with the wizzrobes) I think can also just completely screw you if you get bad luck as well, but it's not much of an issue, and it's a common quest issue in general, rather than something specific to this.

 

Played through on Deeper (Hard) difficulty, got roughly 90% of things in the quest on intuition alone. I can see myself replaying this one just for funsies or in the background when other people play it, and it explores ideas that I've been exploring in my own quest to a much larger degree than I've touched upon.

 

There's something to be said about how many things this quest does that outright feel scripted that aren't, and that couldn't be more abundantly shown than with the boomerang in this quest, which has one of the most creative gimmicks I've seen in a ZC quest out there.

 

It's an easy 5/5, might actually be the easiest 5/5 I've ever given a quest, even. I look forward to seeing if I can utilize some of the ideas present here in my own stuff. I think anybody looking to start playing quests, or hell, looking to learn what ZC can now do without scripting should play this immediately.