Patch Quest is a top-down Bullet Hell Roguelike-Metroidvania Genre Mashup developed by Lychee Game Labs and published by Curve Games. It was released in early access in May 2021, with a full release on March 2, 2023.
The game is set in a world made of patches, covered in patch pins and inhabited by monsters. Long ago, the patches of the world came apart at the seams — and the player, as part of the Adventurer's Guild, seeks to rediscover the lost patches and put them back together. To aid you in your quest, you are equipped with the talking backpack guide PAC, a nutriblaster which shoots soothing goop at monsters, a pin press to collect patch pins, and a lasso.
The game has a fixed map with set zones, dungeons, and shortcuts, but composed of procedurally generated rooms and corridors. Each run, the player sets off from their base camp to explore the island. To help you, your lasso can be used to capture and ride any monster you encounter, letting you use all of that monster's skills and abilities. Monsters can also be defeated by shooting them with your nutriblaster, which can consume a selection of fruits as ammunition with special abilities. The various patch pins you encounter on the way, such as plants, corals, rocks, or artificial constructs, all have their own abilities and can aid you or impede your way.
Patch Quest provides examples of the following tropes:
- Abnormal Ammo: The Nutriblaster shoots nutritious goop as standard, but can also shoot a variety of fruits, sap, or smoothies.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Zigzagged and ultimately downplayed. Your sidekick PAC ends up being the True Final Boss, though they only betray you because they downloaded a computer virus in Deep Patchlantis, rather than because they had any nefarious plans. The Patch Commander — the AI that corrupted PAC into turning on the player — comes closer to playing the trope straight, but it's actually an aversion or another heavily downplayed example, since it's only fulfilling its directive to protect the Kingpin and the ruins of Patchlantis, and acts out of mistrust towards the player rather than malice (mistrust that turns out to be well-founded, since taking the Kingpin would cause Patchlantis to come apart at the seams). It even warns the player to turn back a few rooms before its hostile takeover, and when it does attack the player, it expresses some regret that it had to come to that. On the other hand, the Patch Commander's exact choice of words implies that it takes some sadistic pleasure in imprisoning the player forever, and it's rather upset when the player's pets come to the player's rescue and enable the player to fight back. So, all in all, the Patch Commander's doing what it's supposed to do — prevent intruders from raiding and possibly destroying the island — but it still manages to come across as being a little unhinged in its methods and attitude towards performing its job.
- Amphibian at Large: All amphibian monsters, including Sandamander, Amplikewt, Croakamel, and Tattoad, are big enough to be ridden by a human.
- Badass Adorable: Nearly every monster is designed to be cute, and all of them can be a serious threat to the player. Special mention goes to Tyregg, which is a badass before even hatching!
- Boring, but Practical: Some of the most useful passive abilities in the game are simple ailment immunities.
- Bubble Shield: The Bubble effect will shield you and your monster from one hit before popping. Applied from the Shampshrew's defensive ability or making contact with a bubble bulb.
- Convection, Schmonvection: You can float over lava pools in the Volcano Zone without a single care. Or ride a living, explosive bomb.
- Defeat Means Friendship: The Critter Converter charm enforces this for all the critters encountered by the player.
- Eating the Enemy: Strangely inverted — Galvangler's elite ability (Predator) is to swallow a smaller allied monster to enter a Frenzy.
- Elite Mook: Elite and King-size monsters, appropriately enough, are simply bigger versions of regular monsters with additional abilities.
- Field Power Effect: The Terrain Master charm, appropriately, boost all the player's stats when in hazardous terrain.
- Flavor Text: Every captured monster and pin has a short description.
- Lily-Pad Platform: Several pins function this way, including actual Lilypads, Wallflowers, Clamshells, Four Leaf Lilies, and Chillypads.
- Limited Move Arsenal: Each monster has two passives, one defense skill, and two attack skills. Your mount also has a once-per-battle super skill, while enemy elite monsters have an additional elite ability.
- Made of Explodium: Bomboulders in the Volcano Zone are liable to explode if you so much as breathe on them.
- Meaningful Name: Most monster names are Pokémon-like puns.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: Besides the many hybrids of animals and inanimate objects, there is an entire sub-zone populated mostly by dinosaur-shaped mochi aliens.
- Overly-Long Tongue: Majeleon and Magellion, in line with their chameleon inspirations.
- Quieting the Unquiet Dead: The nutriblaster works by calming monsters down with nutritious goop — including the undead shelletons in the Fossil Mine.
- Rolling Attack: Several examples, including Clawtress's Bowling Ball and Scorpenter's sawblade.
- Seahorse Steed: Seabra and Seabro, though they are closer to normal horses than most.
- Technicolor Toxin: All poison attacks are bright green.
- Underground Monkey: Different monster species are designed to be distinct, but subspecies are often very similar. Most obvious with variants of Saberfloof and Lightling.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Petting your pet monsters gives a small boost to their bond with you — but once their bond is maxed out, you can pet them just to show them you love them.
