Kofi Quest: Alpha mod is an action-strategy adventure game available on Steam. Joseph Pugh conducted this review.
Overview
Kofi Quest: Alpha mod is a comedic game following the adventures of Kofi. Kofi is a low-level lazy video game character who shares a house with his equally pathetic friend, Slime. The inhabitants of Kofi Quest know they are in a video game and it features a lot of tongue in cheek humor that riffs on that theme.
For example. A character that isn’t important enough to be voiced might you all about it. Another scene involved an overdramatic death of a character only for them to immediately respawn at a nearby save point.
The writing and voice acting do an excellent job of providing a silly and funny experience that plays on many themes, memes, and references about video games and the people that play them.
The gameplay, on the other hand, controls much like a real-time strategy game. You control Kofi and his followers indirectly, telling them where to move and attack. Many characters, especially important ones like Kofi, function like generals and have several abilities that can be activated.
On lower difficulties, you can get through it simply by brute-forcing the game. Higher difficulty settings require precise and timely micromanagement to succeed.
Gameplay
Most of Kofi Quest has you following
You generally control several units at once. As you defeat foes you gain motivation that Kofi can use to call in allies. You gain access to a large variety of units each with strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. From frontline children, ranged elves, moles that can tunnel underground and flying beetle wizards.
You can find or buy gear to upgrade your heroes and troops, but items you pick up aren’t yours until you find a save point. If Kofi dies, he drops them where he fell and you will need to go pick them up again. In most cases, you only get a game over if a specific character gets killed, and it’s usually not Kofi. Fallen troops need to be replenished with motivation, but heroes never die! They respawn.
The concept works pretty well, intelligent management of your units, abilities, and inventory is the key to combat and you can pull off some unique combinations using troop abilities. Characters like Kofi, have several different skills they can use. Slime can blow himself for example, while Kofi can summon Wargo his dire wolf mount.
Items are used in realtime by opening the backpack and dragging items you want to use over the characters you want to use them on. You collect gold by killing enemies, in chests and of course by cutting bushes.
In practice, however, micromanagement can be a challenge. Incompetence is kind of a core theme and your ranged units will quite happily shoot their friends in the back with poor positioning. The characters will gripe about it too.
While the art style is incredibly charming it has its issues. Units, friend and foe alike can kind of clip into or hide behind each other and the terrain making it difficult to click on and perform the actions you desire. The camera is static so it can be hard to tell whats even going on when a lot of units are on screen at a time.
This exacerbates the fact that your front-line is constantly subjected to friendly fire from ranged units. While it can be amusing at first, it quickly becomes an annoyance.
The path-finding is pretty brain-dead and I’ve lost quite a few units that walked over an edge unintentionally, caught themselves on fire or even fell into stupid mole tunnels that I myself dugout.
Progression isn’t all that interesting. Kofi Quest is a very light RPG. The focus is more on unit control and humor. It succeeds pretty well in those departments barring my previous complaints. Exploring the world and meeting its inhabitants is always interesting and hilarious. You can even unlock neat mini-games to play on Kofi’s home console.
Different units aren’t just important in battle. They can play a part in puzzle solving and environmental interactions. Moles can dig tunnels to reach otherwise inaccessible items and objects. Orc engineers can repair bridges and the water-based Scales can swim. Exploration very much feels like a nostalgic nod at early adventure games, but with modernized nerd humor along the way.
Verdict
Kofi Quest: Alpha Mod is a refreshing game in many ways. The real-time strategy genre doesn’t get of love anymore so in today’s gaming climate Kofi Quest already feels unique. Furthermore, its gamer humor is spot on without feeling like it’s trying too hard. Playing Kofi Quest feels very much like playing a well done weekend cartoon series, and in a good way.
The gameplay works well even if controlling it can sometimes be frustrating. The game does have difficulty settings so you can tune the experience either way. There is a large variety of friendly units, enemies and secrets to uncover.
It’s most definitely a lighter experience but not one that feels incomplete. Yet the controls and camera issues did impact my enjoyment of the game. I did encounter some bugs, including one that temporarily stopped me from progressing for a while, a few freezes, and my interface vanishing. Some were already ironed out, but not all.
If you have a solid sense of humor, Kofi Quest is still worth a look, especially if you like the idea of an adventure game that controls like a strategy game. If you are on the fence, you should check out the Kofi Quest web series.
A copy of Kofi Quest: Alpha Mod was provided for Gideon’s Gaming by Loftur Studio.
Enjoy real-time strategy games? Check out my reviews of Crying Suns, Warparty, and Driftland: The Magic Revival.
Pros
- The humorous writing and voice overs are excellent
- Charming art style
- Interesting strategy gameplay with a variety of units and heroes
- Difficulty settings present
Cons
- Controls can be clunky and micromanaging units can be frustrating
- Progression is a little light
- Some bugs are still present.
