REVIEW: Quench


Title	Quench
Developer	Axon Interactive Inc
Publisher	Axon Interactive Inc
Release Date	August 7th, 2019
Genre	Puzzle
Platform	Switch, PC
Age Rating	E for Everyone
Official Website

Even with my love for indie games and my love for puzzle games, I usually don’t like to combine the two. I can’t really put it into words as to why. Most of the time, they just don’t appeal to me. Quench looks to change all that, however. But will its stylized looks be enough to sway my attention over?

Let’s get this out of the way first, Quench does look really pretty. It’s an almost arts and crafts-like style that I can really get behind. Everything is very polygonal, and it creates this really unique effect. I especially love the 2D art in the game. It invokes the feelings of both wilderness, and creativity.

In Quench you follow the Shepherd as you attempt to lead all of the animal tribes on a pilgrimage to the Eastern Elder Tree to make offerings. Things take a turn for the worse when evil spirits begin to turn up, and the land gets harsh. The story is simple, and makes a great backdrop for the rest of the game. There’s not a whole lot I can say, it’s just a neat story that works as a setup.

Now we get to the meat, how the game plays. Like stated before, you have to solve puzzles on your pilgrimage to the Eastern Elder Tree. Most of the gameplay revolves around using certain weather powers to make things easier for the tribes as they move through the land. You can create rain, send down lightning, cause earthquakes, and send a powerful gust of wind. Each level limits you on how many of these you can use, so it adds a nice element of strategy to the game. The tribe also has to eat, so the terrain they’re on also matters. It’s better to move them to grass, or use the rain to make some so that their stamina stays as high as possible. It doesn’t become a real problem until you run out, but if you do you’ll have to start over from the beginning of the level.

Generally speaking, all of this works nicely…well sort of. While the puzzles are fine, and there’s a good variety of them, there are some technical troubles. I played the game on the Nintendo Switch, and it had a rough time running the game at certain points. I remember having horrible amounts of framerate drops, especially towards the end. It’s sad, but this is a really big problem with the game. I’ve heard that it’s better on PC, but as it sits right now I did have a good time with Quench. It’s currently $19.99 on the Switch store, and I had about 5 hours worth of gameplay on it. I recommend this game if you love puzzle games, but just be wary that it has some technical issues that hold it back, at least on this console.