Dad Quest

I went into Dad Quest expecting thirty minutes of chuckles and a polite refund request. What I got instead was a few hours with one of the more quietly disarming comedic platformers Sundae Month has put out, and the kind of game that makes you feel a little guilty for underestimating it. The setup is deceptively absurd: you are Dad #63, fresh out of a government research facility, tasked with searching for something called the Dad Spirit. Your child, who is biologically indestructible, is your primary weapon. Combat splits into a charged swing attack and a directional throw, both aimed with the mouse, and as you level your kid up you unlock variations - a piercing throw that bounces the child off walls for a second hit, a stun throw, a mid-air whirl for extra damage. Your child can equip two toys at once that modify their stats and abilities, while you carry heirlooms that alter your own mechanics and occasionally open new exploration routes in a light Metroidvania fashion. The healing system is notably harsh for a game this charming: rest points are single-use, permanently, so every recovery becomes a small tense calculation you carry for the whole run. The story earns its tonal pivot. The tutorial lab is a series of cheerfully dumb sight gags and self-aware NPC dialogue. Then you board a boat, and the game does something genuinely unexpected, and suddenly the comedy has a bruise at its center. Reviewers who went in for the dad jokes came out talking about the writing. That says a lot about what Sundae Month actually cared about when building this. The chiptune soundtrack sits in that same space - retro-nostalgic on the surface, but scored with enough warmth that the quieter story beats land. The pixel art pops with vibrant colour rather than leaning on muddy retro pastiche, and the level layouts are legible enough that you rarely lose the thread of where to go next, which matters when quest tracking is the game's softest weak spot. Quest boards are sparse, item objectives don't appear as active reminders, and once or twice you will be wandering a zone wondering what key you were supposed to be finding. The difficulty is the other caveat worth flagging. The early game spikes before you have fully internalized the controls, and players who prefer a gentle learning curve are going to run into a wall before the mechanics click. Enemy variety is limited too, with palette swaps filling out the later chapters more than fresh designs. Neither issue is fatal, but both are real, and they are worth knowing about before you sit down. A controller is strongly recommended over keyboard and mouse once the moveset expands - the mouse-aimed throw is clever in concept but gets fiddly fast when you have four or five abilities competing for your fingers. For its runtime, Dad Quest knows what it is. It is a small, handcrafted thing that wants to make you laugh, then catch you off guard, then let you go. That is a harder trick than it looks, and Sundae Month mostly pulls it off.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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