Long, long ago, games were divided into genres, yea, even subgenres, and a division was placed between East and West and it was . . . okay. Well, better than okay. I mean, we all love our Western RPGs and our jRPGs, our Blizzard MMOs and our Bioware single-player epics. But it wasn’t quite right. 

With SideQuest, we’ve decided to tear down those walls and treat game ideas like they came a la carte, rather than as part of a fixed menu. We’ve taken MMO PvP and endgame elements and married them to a robust single-player campaign; we’ve taken the aesthetic and feel of classic console RPGs and leavened it with modern PC design innovations; we’ve taken Japanese aesthetics and paired them with Western narrative techniques; and we’ve crafted a deep, rich setting and populated it with absurd characters. In short, we believe that it’s possible to have your cake and eat it too.

It’s just, err, we need you guys to help us buy the cake.

You mean the run-on “this and that” sentence above didn’t make it perfectly clear? Fine.

SideQuest is a Unity-based, free-to-play browser-based RPG. Wait! Don’t go! It gets better!

In certain respects, SideQuest is a robust MMO: players can fight each other (synchronously or asynchronously) in arenas and battlegrounds, join forces to go on raids or quests, form guilds and trade loot, compete on a leader board, and go head-to-head in a full-featured collectible card game.

In other respects, however, SideQuest is a deep single-player game. Unlike most MMOs, SideQuest uses a jRPG-like preset party. The player picks a main character from five heroes, and the other four act as companion characters. These heroes are the focus of a single-player campaign with a rich story, varied quests and puzzles, cutscenes, and so forth. 

In essence, players engage in the single-player aspect in parallel with each other, and then cross paths during the multi-player PvP and cooperative aspects. These multi-player aspects (along with challenge dungeons) also act as an end-game once the singe-player aspect is complete.

Damn you.

No. We are well aware that there is a large subset of F2P games based around game-breaking or obnoxious fund-raising methods. SideQuest doesn’t  fall into that category. 

The fact is, we have already invested hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars—far more than we’re asking for from this Kickstarter offering—to develop SideQuest. In order to make the game financially viable, there has to be a commercial aspect to it. In our view, a F2P model—one that doesn’t unbalance the game or ruin your social life—is the best way to allow the largest number of people to play the game.

We are not locking content or making the best items available only for real-money purchase. Other than vanity items, everything that can be bought can be found or traded for. Moreover, the entire single-player campaign is completely unaffected by what other players do, and we have several methods for insuring that cash transactions will not unbalances the endgame.

First of all, from top to bottom, SideQuest is custom-made and carefully designed. Every area, every character, every cutscene is designed to be aesthetically striking and engaging from a gameplay perspective. There aren’t filler skills or filler areas or filler text or recolored enemies just thrown in to pad the game. Instead, every quest features custom art, unique gameplay elements, and narrative significance. 

Second, the party-based gameplay—while not necessarily unique among MMOs (take SWTOR for example)—is nevertheless distinctive. Each of the five characters has multiple archetypes; for example, you can respec your knight as either a tank or a paladin; the same is true for the other four characters. In addition, every skill can be transformed by augmentations, giving even more options for how your characters work. The ability to deeply customize your main character and change the roles your companions play means much greater strategic depth and synergy. 

Third, SideQuest has all of the features that are standard in high-budget MMOs but rare in browser-based games. That means complex, challenging dungeons with massive bosses. It means that you can refine and rework items into ever more powerful forms. It means full-featured PvP, including head-to-head duels, team-based battle-grounds, and much more. 

Fourth, SideQuest has a real story. We’ve hired a writer with substantial experience writing stories for commercial and independent RPGs, adventure games, and RTS games. We’ve built a world with a deep history and striking settings. And the structure of the overall single-player campaign is an epic. But, at the same time, we’ve populated that world and story with absurd characters who poke fun at genre conventions and bumble their way from one disaster to the next. (We’ve aimed for the brand of humor found in classic LucasArts adventure games or Army of Darkness, rather than on-the-nose satire in, say, Deathspank.) The story is, of course, not required; you can always skip ahead or go straight to PvP. But we wanted to give real context to the gameplay, rather than having it exist just for the sake of grinding.

Finally, as mentioned above, the game also features CardSlayers!, a full-featured collectible-card minigame that can be played both during the single-player campaign and against other players.

Food? Electricity? Avoiding foreclosure?

Nope! We’re ready to squat, starving in the darkness, to make this game. Instead, the additional funding will help us improve the features described above, including:

* Lengthening the single-player campaign at launch.

* Adding a more complex Guild system.

* Putting in even more enemy types, skills, and custom effects.

* Having even bigger and badder bosses.

* Increasing customization options.

In short, while we’re committed to making SideQuest come hell or high water, your support means that we can offer an even better game from the outset.

And now what you're really here for, rewards!

More information at: www.side-quest.com

Music Credits:

• Blood Winter - Mattias Westlund
• The Battle of Gavelburg - Mattias Westlund
• Epic Voyage - Mattias Westlund
• Sound Effects - 魔王魂, Skype