Review Fix Exclusive: Inside ‘The Quest Giver’

Review Fix chats with Daniel Szodruch – Co-Founder, Game Designer and Composer for the fun indie, old-school RPG, The Quest Giver. Detailing the game’s creation and even sharing a few development stories, Szodruch lets us know exactly why it’s a cool game.

Review Fix: How was this game born?

Daniel Szodruch: It was born by simply playing RPG games and asking ourselves: how much effort must it be to be a quest giver, to gather all the knowledge necessary to write profound quests, to keep track of what has been done and what needs to be done. But most of all the game was born, because we felt like no one has ever asked that question before.

Review Fix: What has development been like so far?

Szodruch: It’s been a rollercoaster ride. We actually started working on “The Quest Giver” about four years ago, before we even released our first game. But soon we realized that we were far to unexperienced to create a project this complex. So we put it on ice soon after we started. But now, four years and a released game later, we felt ready for it.

In the recent development we had to think over many design decisions, each time we realized that something we decided on, would collide eventually with another decision. This happened a lot in the past year.

Review Fix: What makes this game special?

Szodruch: Not the game itself is special, but the idea, and the opportunities you have within the game.

The gameplay is a simple point and click system, known from various adventure or management games. The idea is special, because it takes on the classic fantasy setting from a new perspective, a part in RPGs that hasn’t been played before. We want to display that part as realistic as we can (as far as realism can go in a fantasy setting), which means the game won’t help the player be a quest giver at all. It will merely offer the tools.

Review Fix: What games influenced this one the most?

Szodruch: As a matter of fact, the games that are most commonly associated or compared with our game, are games we haven’t played (prior to development), such as Recettear or Shoppe Keep.

The games that actually influenced us to have the ideas are numerous RPGs, but of course also games like: The Guild, My Life as a King, Dungeon Keeper and also Civilization.

Review Fix: As an indie studio, what do you think you guys do differently than the big studios?

Szodruch: We aim to think outside the box, and we allow ourselves to think outside the box. The big studios are all afraid to try something new, to break with traditions, or to not let themselves be restricted by norms. We strive for “restrictionless” ideas, which is also hidden in our company name: rest.less Games “rest“ is short for “restrictionless”).

Review Fix: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?

Szodruch: More of a wild moment. We signed up for a small convention that was held in our city, to showcase an early version of our game there. The evening before, we meant to put some finishing touches on the version, when our server crashed. We never really figured out what happened, but we had lost a huge amount of progress and had to revert to older versions. We then spent the whole night rebuilding what had been lost, but of course due to the time pressure we made a lot of mistakes. One hour before we had to be at the convention (about 7 o’ clock in the morning) we still didn’t have a bug free version, so we had to call and cancel. We went home very sad and very tired.

Review Fix: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics like the ones in Classic games in new games is important?

Szodruch: Personally I don’t think so. I think games with entirely new mechanics are very interesting, and also very important. They expand our horizon in terms of game experience.

Why we stuck to classic game mechanics is because: firstly, the game is taking on a classic genre and we want the player to feel used to it or maybe a bit nostalgic, and secondly we didn’t want the game mechanics to have too much of an impact on the immersion of the world. The player is encouraged to think about the world and the content, instead of thinking about how the mechanics work.

Review Fix: What’s your favorite memory as a gamer?

Szodruch: That would probably the night I “turned into” a gamer. I had borrowed “Final Fantasy VIII” for Playstation 1 that day and started playing in the evening. I was around 13 years old. The game blew my mind in a way I had never experienced before and made me forget time. At 6 o’ clock in the morning my mom came in only to find me still awake and playing. I didn’t even notice it was already morning and it was my first time ever to pull an all-nighter.

Review Fix: How does this game disrupt the video game landscape?

Szodruch: I’m really hoping it serves a motivation for other developers to look at other genres in a similar way “The Quest Giver” looks at RPGs. And it might encourage players to be wanting more glimpses behind “genre curtains.”

Review Fix: Who will enjoy this game the most?

Szodruch: Fans of the roleplaying genre, old school gamers, Pen & Paper gamers, fantasy fans, and fans of management simulations.

Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered?

Szodruch: We want it to be remembered as something new, as something funny, as something you’ve played a lot, and as a typical rest.less Games product.

Review Fix: What are the goals for the game?

Szodruch: The in-game world could be ever-growing and we mean to let it grow. We have a whole lot of ideas for game enhancing mechanics and expanding content. The version we plan to release in the 2nd quarter of 2018 will merely be the basic game, for which we can then create updates, additonal content, and improvements. For the additional content we want to work with the community and realize their ideas and/or wishes.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Szodruch: We have many game ideas in our drawer, but will stick to the two projects we already have in 2018. This means creating content for “The Quest Giver,” but also reworking our first game “Wait.”

We want to make it accessible for a wider range of people, as it is currently only available for PC.

We haven’t communicated this yet, but we plan to increase the platform variety and maybe more (which is not yet to be revealed).

Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?

Szodruch: We’re very thankful for all the help, advice, and support we got from other indie developers and we really want to encourage all “indies” to stick together.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13821 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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