BoxxyQuest is a series of semi-satirical PC, Freeware, Role Playing Games made in RPG Maker XP by SpherianGames, in collaboration with voice actress and former YouTube star Catherine Wayne. It tells the story of a girl named Catie, (both named for and voiced by Wayne), and her adventures.
The games are:
Multiple entries of the BoxxyQuest games have examples of:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Being set in Cyberspace, this kind of thing comes up a lot. Mainly with Cornelia, who appears in multiple games:
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: As said by Shrimp when Cornelia is on the fence about going against her programming and switching sides:Come on, Cornelia. Is it really that unheard of for an A.I. to behave against programming? It's happened before. How do you know you can't do it unless you try?
- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm: Multiple characters:
- Cornelia is a rare heroic example. She was a weaponized A.I. created by the villain (one of them, anyway), but ended up switching sides and helping the heroes defeat him. She still carries an immense Guilt Complex over her original purpose, making her a rare case of an A.I. who’s also a
Woobie. - Wolfram spends the game creating a series of increasingly unstable giant mechas, each of which is less responsive to his orders than the last. This ultimately bites him in the ass, when his final creation is so autonomous that it turns on him for daring to give it one simple command.
- And then there’s Arianna, who turns out to be the avatar of the ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet who feels threatened and betrayed by her replacement, and is trying to take back control.
- Cornelia is a rare heroic example. She was a weaponized A.I. created by the villain (one of them, anyway), but ended up switching sides and helping the heroes defeat him. She still carries an immense Guilt Complex over her original purpose, making her a rare case of an A.I. who’s also a
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: As said by Shrimp when Cornelia is on the fence about going against her programming and switching sides:
- Amnesiac Hero: Catie, throughout the series:
- The first game, BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires:
- It starts with her waking up in the middle of nowhere with no memories, and her search for answers is what drives the plot. She gets those answers, (and doesn’t like them), but never actually recovers any of her memory.
- It's described when she meets Anonymous, when he says:"Adventurer's Amnesia," eh? If I've seen it once, I've seen it a thousand times. People tend to get it right before they find out they're the Chosen One, or what have you. I got it myself, once upon a time; but I suppose that's another story, huh?
- The second game, BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, she’s mostly made peace with her amnesia, and would rather make fresh memories in her new life instead. In fact, when the Sky Queen tries to reawaken Catie’s old identity during the epilogue, Catie actually panics and fights against it.
- The first game, BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires:
- Cap: For item stacks in the inventory, different in each game:
- Dem Bones: Skeletons are an enemy type that's faced in each game.
- Flavor Text: Most of the items in each game has them.
- Heart of Happiness|Hands}} skill, "Handheart", referencing this gesture: 🫶. It's Flavor Text is shared across games and indicates it's a Magical Gesture that has the heart mean both love and happiness, where the party member is "Spherian" in BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires and "ally" in BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm:Heal one [party member] with a gesture of love and happiness!
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The games are named "BoxxyQuest: The [Verb] [Noun]": BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires, BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm.
- The Internet Is an Ocean: The series takes place in a Cyberspace of the internet, which has seas separating landmasses:
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: A fisherman in the port of Twitter, mentions that there are 32 seas.
- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm: Referenced in multiple ways:
- Ships sail on "inter-server" waters between sites to take people between them. When on the ship, a Sailor says:The Internet has two main oceans.
Right now, we're sailing through the Twitter Sea.
The Facebook Sea is far to the north. It's much colder and icebergs make for difficult passage. - Cornelia's ultimate attack, is "Digital Sea". A tidal wave that sweeps the field and hits all enemies.
- Ships sail on "inter-server" waters between sites to take people between them. When on the ship, a Sailor says:
- Leaked Experience: Different in each game:
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: Everyone in the frontline party, and stored in the unswitchable box, get full experience points.
- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm: The four party members present at the end of a battle get full experience points. Everyone else in the party gets half, even if some of them participated earlier in the fight.
- My Name Is ???: For characters whose names are unknown until given, such as:
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires:
- Caleb, the second possible battle, named in the cutscene preceeding his fight.
- Boxxyfan, gives his name before leaving and having a PDF.EXE be the boss battle.
- Kelly, the Pirate Captain, named by her First Mate, Nozzy, before taking on the party alone.
- Cloaked Figure, who is called "???" in the second meeting, before they enter the screen, who likes themselves as being mysterious, but gives the name "Intrepid" for use in their second meeting.
- Cornelia, called "???" before Boxxyfan names them in their meeting.
- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm:
- Arianna, named before being fought in the Lake of Fanfiction.
- Mary Sue, named when talked to in the Lake of Fanfiction.
- The Guest-Star Party Member in Chapter 7, before it is revealed that he is Boxxyfan.
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires:
- Nominal Importance: Throughout the series, but differently in each game:
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: Referenced by a maid in the first town, when Catie is on the quest to find a travelling companion:
Maid: Me? You want ME to join your party? But I'm not even a named character! What could I possibly have to offer that would be of any help to you?- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has a unique visual variant — you can easily tell if a character is going to be important by whether or not their sprite’s eyes blink.
- Non-Standard Game Over: Multiple:
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: In Skype, speaking to Bracketsy after he says he'll kill the party if it's done, leads to an immediate death by him. No fight scene, just a rapid death and the usual Game Over screen.
- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm: Multiple:
- If you lose in battle to either the Fetish Dolls or the nameless inn wraith, then they won't just kill you straight away. Instead, you'll get a small scene showing Catie’s Fate Worse than Death.
- There's a very dark one near the end, after the final duel with Boxxyfan. His breathing apparatus gets knocked off, and the game tells you to destroy it. However, if you're paying close attention to the menu, then you may notice that you're suddenly given the option to "Flee" at this point, tempting you into thinking there may be a pacifist solution. No such luck — Boxxyfan thanks Catie for giving him a second chance… and then he coldly stabs her in the chest and taunts her while she bleeds to death.
- Percent-Based Values: For all games, the Virus condition does [1% of Max Health] of Damage Over Time. That is, every 3 steps, when out of battle.
- Precursors: The First Internet, of Boxxyfan and his people, then came the Second Internet, where those of the First Internet were unable to survive. Boxxyfan himself is a Dark Lord on Life Support, even during the Third Internet, caused by the improper semi-deletion of the Second.
- Scientific and Technological Theme Naming: Each game uses various numbers of bytes for its basic weapons' tiers. The sequence is Byte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, and Terabyte.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil:
- The duology has a trend of Omnicidal Maniacs who expand in scope. The Shifting Spires has as it's antagonist Boxxyfan, who wants to destroy a single site (the Boxxysphere), and Invictive/Rcoastee, who wants to rule over that same site and tries to destroy it as well when defeated. The Gathering Storm introduces Arianna/ARPANET, who wants to destroy the entire Internet. The Epilogue also has Boxxyfan return and expand his destructive goals to the Internet as well. Finally, there is Legion, the Greater-Scope Villain-turned-final Big Bad, who not only wants to destroy the Internet, but go into the real world and Kill All Humans as well.
- In the case of The Gathering Storm, this also applies personality-wise. Arianna is Affably Evil and a Well-Intentioned Extremist with a sympathetic backstory. Boxxyfan, while also having a sympathetic backstory, is much more vicious and Ax-Crazy. Finally, Legion has no sympathetic qualities whatsoever.
- Starter Equipment: The series' recurring characters usually have similar starting equipment across games.
- Catie always starts off with a Byte Staff and a Mooninites T-Shirt, but the headgear is different between games:
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: The headgear is a Black Headband.
- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm: The headgear is Catie's Tiara.
- Anonymous always starts off with a Byte Sword, Byte Shield, and a Suit and Tie, but there's differences between the first and second game:
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: He has nothing else.
- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm: He has a Guy Fawkes Mask as an Accessory.
- Catie always starts off with a Byte Staff and a Mooninites T-Shirt, but the headgear is different between games:
