2 replies to this topic

[Haylee]

Tom's Sweet Quest by Marbleeater

 

 

 

It's only 2 hours long, so it can easily be appended to the end of a short Quest Club month.

It's a 1.90 quest from 2001, so it's pretty old. I think it's a fun, weird quest with a really neat overworld full of stuff to explore, and a fascinating document of what quests could be before the innovations of Revenge 2 or 1.92 - it's structurally weird, with each dungeon boss dropping a major item instead of a heart container, and I think the openness of it could lead to a lot of diverging routes through the quest that might be interesting to watch unfold. Also, it features a really neat graphical style with some really interesting cartoony "upgraded classic" tile work.

In short, I think this quest is an unjustly forgotten gem. I think even people that aren't quite as 1.90-brained or Classic-brained would enjoy it.

So this may seem like a swerve, and that's because it is! There's plenty of old 1.90 quests with a cult following, but most of those are in the PZC database, and it's so it makes sense that a quest like this one would so readily fall under the radar. With how short Quest Club will be this month, this is a nice bonus feature to tack on this time around! I look forward to anybody interesting in playing this one....

 

As always, a link to the discord thread can be found here. To be clear about the way we will handle mini QCs moving forward, they will be tacked onto quests that are on the shorter end, and playing either this or the main event is encouraged during VCs!

[Jamian]

I've played this until the end of Level 7. I may or may not continue later on.

 

The quest started really nicely, in a "Zelda 1 with a few twists" way. The overworld was interesting to explore, and the dungeons, while not offering anything groundbreaking, were pleasant enough. Needing to obtain a key in the overworld to get past each dungeon's first room is a nice touch.

 

However, I have some issues with the quest, and they steadily became more present as it went on, as though the later parts were more hastily thrown together.

 

First of all, there are several tile warps errors, which will do things like send you in an empty passageway, or make you respawn in the overworld in square 0, forcing you to F6 to be able to continue. Playtesting the quest more carefully would have helped here.

 

Worse still, especially in the later parts, the quest arbitrarily disregards its own rules. Example: the ladder allows you to walk over one water tile in THIS screen, but not in THAT screen... because... reasons that mankind was not meant to know.

 

Level 7 felt particularly janky (probably the reason I stopped there), abruptly alternating map types, with different subscreens, and no way to see which parts of the map you've actually visited. It also has an item that acts like the bait, but looks exactly like the map item, so it seems like you're getting the map item twice in this dungeon, until you find out one of them somehow made it to your selectable subscreen. This may seem minor, but when such annoyances become commonplace, they do decrease my enjoyment of the quest.

 

Blowing the whistle to travel the overworld also randomly sent me to Level 9's entrance, past the Triforce check, even though I have not even visited Level 8 yet.

 

Overall, I see potential here, but it could have been much better with just a little extra effort.

[Haylee]

Just beat it. This is 100% in the category of "Really cool ideas are at play here, even if the tech or design cues aren't entirely up to snuff." I still love what's here.

 

Gameplay wise, you can definitely tell in the latter half, that the creator's sense of difficulty and design started to dim a bit, mostly in terms of the fact that the lategame dungeons are generally straight lines with slight deviations here in there with very little reason to actually kill enemies. This dimming of design, however, is supplemented by what I think to be absolutely visually pretty design, from the beach, to level 7, and level 9 especially. There's a lot to like here as a historical piece and I recommend it to anyone looking to play something made so far back in ZC's history.

 

Fair warning for anybody willing to hop in though, Level 8 has a very mean instance of a compat bug with the lens not telling you about a push block that's integral to progression. For those who need a proper nudge in the right direction: Push the Bottom Left block in the room next to the Bracelet 2.

 

Overall, I see potential here, but it could have been much better with just a little extra effort.

In general, I do think you're judging the "effort" behind this quest under an incredibly modern lens that's not really built for it. If we're talking about the earliest quests in ZC's history, then we're entering ZC as a hobby in its purest form. Stuff like the continue bugs and the map issues are explicitly 1.90 compatibility bugs (Or just regular 1.90 bugs backported into modern ZC... or just formal oversights in the case of the whistle taking you to level 9?). These issues are not the product of a lack of effort, but rather, very real fundamental program issues at the time. Stuff like the ladder issue as well, are simply hobbiest "If you understand the program, then you understand how making the ladder on screens work, and that's just tedious as sin sometimes." I've worked with ZC for long enough, so when it comes to issues like that, I generally tend to just have a little bit of suspension of disbelief in this regard.

 

Also, it doesn't help that I legitimately ran into zero of the warp point issues you mentioned, and it's genuinely confusing to me (I was playing on 2.55.9 though, so maybe there's a ZC version difference causing problems?). With that said, I know scrolling warps in 1.90 are completely fucked up and impossible to work around, so I would not be shocked if they were here.

 

I think where this quest stands out and shows very clear effort, and where the creator's strengths clearly lie, is in looking visually interesting. From the miniscule changes to the classic tileset, to all the new tiles here, and on top of that, there's many cool ideas that can be used to inspire other people's future projects. I think Level 7 is a good example, honestly: It's a dungeon that has both indoor and outdoor sections, and while the tech wasn't there to pull that off effectively in 1.90, I think it can be agreed it's frankly a very cool dungeon idea. I think the quest is chalk full of small stuff like this, and I think it should be looked from that standpoint. If you see an idea that can be done better (And trust me, almost every idea here can be done better), then I think it's the perfect fuel to get inspired to take those ideas to heart.

 

The last bit I need to mention is that I think in the things this quests accomplishes, it should be pointed out when this quest actually came out. Specifically, it predates many of the best 1.90 quests of the era, and while it largely does its ideas worse than those quests, there's still value in a quest that does them first.